


in memory of golden summer hours

by wearealltalesintheend



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: F/M, Farmer Ronan Lynch, Horror, I mean, M/M, Minor Henry Cheng/Richard Gansey III/Blue Sargent, Post-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Temporary Amnesia, consider it, everyone forgot the events of trc, gotta go with the season, it's almost halloween and all, it's barelly there really, it's slow burn until it's not, sort of a It AU?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-07-20 08:35:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 46,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16133594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wearealltalesintheend/pseuds/wearealltalesintheend
Summary: "The raven caws, loud and high-pitched, and that, too, sounds urgent, before it takes flight, making its way up to the sky. Adam watches it go until the sun is too bright, and his eyes hurt with the light.Memento, the trees whisper, obsecro.And then, Adam wakes up. "or, the one where history is erased and remembering is harder than Adam expects, demons are lying in wait, and Ronan is coping as well as expected.





	1. lumen caeleste sequamur

**Author's Note:**

> hey everyone! 
> 
> It's been a while since I read The Raven Cycle, so, forgive me if there are any inconsistencies, I have like five thousand tabs open on the wiki but it's a bit of a nightmare.
> 
> That being said, I hope this turns out okay. I have it almost finished so there shouldn't be a problem with updates.
> 
> So, enjoy this very self-indulgent kind-of It AU.

( The overgrown grass is soft under his feet, and Adam thinks as far as dreams go, this might be his favorite so far. Everything is quiet in this forest, save for the rustling of leaves and the odd snapping of branches as he walks.

 

He has never dreamt of this place before, doesn’t remember any camping trips on his childhood, but everything feels overly familiar here in the ways only dreams can. The leaves rustle, birds fly overhead, and Adam grins; he wishes he could stay here forever.

 

Against the cloudless blue sky, the birds are black shadows circling the forest silently, slowly, and when one breaks formation to land in a nearby tree, Adam thinks he can recognize it.

 

It’s a raven.

 

Something shifts on his chest, furling and unfurling somewhere around his ribcage. Adam takes a step closer, hand reaching to– he drops it, lets it hang uselessly at his side. The thought of petting a wild bird had come to him as naturally as breathing, as if that’s something he did over and over until it became muscle memory, except– Adam has never owned any kind of bird, has never owned  _ any _ kind of pet, has never even known anyone who owned any sort of pet. Well, unless you counted that one guy two doors down who once tried to smuggle five caterpillars inside the dorm, but Adam usually tries very hard not to.

 

The raven flaps its wings, tilting its head. It looks straight at Adam, and this, too, feels familiar. He can see the bird flying out of a car window, shooting out towards the sky, and he can see it quietly landing on his own shoulder, carefully not breaking skin with its talons. 

 

Adam blinks, the vision fades. He feels dizzy, light-headed, and this is beginning to turn into nonsensical dream shenanigans. The wind picks up, the murmur of the forest grows.

 

_ Memento _ . 

 

At first, he thinks it’s the raven that spoke it, but Adam had been looking at it, and the bird had not moved beyond ruffling its feathers.  _ Memento, _ the whisper echoes all around him again. Suddenly, with all the certainty only dreamers have, Adam knows it’s the trees that are speaking.

 

_ Meminisse debes _ , they say, and it carries with the wind, urging Adam to listen.  _ You must remember _ , he translates with difficulty, stilted. He hasn’t properly studied latin since high school, and his vocabulary has devolved to judiciary words.  _ Memento,  _ they repeat. 

 

“What?” His own voice startles him, the english sounds clumsy, wrong,  _ less _ , here. “Remember what?”

 

_ Obsecro.  _ Please.

 

“I don’t understand,” Adam says, swallowing past the wrongness of the language barrier, because he might be aware this is a dream, but he’s living it right now, with all the urgency the trees cover each word, all the longing, all the sadness, all the aching. His vision is blurring, tears slide down his cheek without him even knowing why he’s crying. “What did I forget?”

 

The raven caws, loud and high-pitched, and that, too, sounds urgent, before it takes flight, making its way up to the sky. Adam watches it go until the sun is too bright, and his eyes hurt with the light.

 

_ Memento, _ the trees whisper,  _ obsecro. _

 

And then, Adam wakes up. )

 

*

 

The dream stays with him even after he washes off the tear tracks and goes on with his daily routine. Adam feels it weighting down on his shoulders throughout all of his early shift at the library, feels it tugging at his core during his morning lectures. 

 

It’s the strangest thing and maybe that’s why he can’t push it out of his mind. Something nags at his whole being, ripples of a knowledge he should have.  _ Remember,  _ the trees had said. But what? If this is his subconscious trying to remind him of something, it’s doing an awful job.

 

A rational part of his brain knows he’s being stupid. It’s just a dream.  _ It’s just a dream.  _ But he can’t help it. Why was it in Latin? Adam is shitty at Latin. What about the raven? What does that mean? No amount of googling gives him anything close to an answer.

 

Adam’s being dumb, he figures. Obsessing over it so close to finals. He can’t afford the distraction, Yale doesn’t forgive distractions. So, at lunch, after wolfing down a sandwich and holing himself up in the library to study, he figures he has time for a nap until his next class.

 

*

 

( He’s back at the forest, and this time there’s a Lake in the clearing. The water is unnaturally still, unnaturally clear, unnaturally empty. Adam has no interest in getting near it. Even so, the idyllic feeling of the place hasn’t changed, and the familiarity of it all, down to the rocks littering the ground, wraps around him like a blanket. He’s been here before, he’s so certain of it, it echoes on his mind as surely as a law of nature. He’s been here before, enough to know every inch of it inside and out. He could count off the leaves on the trees, the ants on the dirt, the chemical components of this soil. 

 

The raven lands on his shoulder this time. 

 

Land is a strong word. One second Adam is alone, the next the bird is there, perched on his shoulder with talons digging on his shirt. “Hey, buddy,” he greets her with a smile, “did you miss me?”

 

He’s not sure why he says that, he’s never seen this bird before these dreams. Except– that’s not true, is it? The raven seems to know Adam like Adam knows this place. Even if Adam can’t find the right memories. 

 

If Adam Parrish were one to believe in any kind of God, he’d say this has all happened in a past life.

 

_ Obsecro, _ the trees whisper again,  _ memento. _

 

“What?” He asks, frustration beginning to build, “what did I forget?”

 

_ Memento, obsecro,  _ the wind carries,  _ contristati sumus. _

 

“Sorry for what?” Adam swallows, throat suddenly dry, “who? Who are you? Why are you sorry?”

 

_ Meminisse debes. _

 

“Please,” he begs, the feeling of loss hits him without warning. It aches deeply, like a physical wound bleeding out, and it almost brings him to his knees, “what did I forget?”

 

The raven caws quietly, as if she, too, had felt it. She pecks the top of Adam’s head before flying away silently, wings dark in a shade he’s never seen. He tries not to feel abandoned.

 

_ Meminisse debes,  _ the whisper is rising, growing into a steadily louder buzzing,  _ constristati sumus. _

 

_ Memento,  _ it grows into screaming, and Adam has to cover his ears,  _ both of them _ ,  _ Magician. _

 

Everything falls silent.

 

That’s a new word. Magician? It resonates somewhere deep inside his bones as if his blood were alight with lightning.  _ Magician.  _ What does that mean? Adam wants to ask, but before he can bring himself to speak again, the dream is dissolving under his feet. )

 

*

 

Adam wakes up crying again, his tears dangerously close to ruining the open notebook in front of him. He’s not surprised. It takes him a long time to stop the tears, and even longer to shake the sadness settling on the empty spaces on his ribcage.

 

*

 

( He’s dreaming again. Or, at least, he thinks he is. 

 

It’s not a forest this time. 

 

Adam is in the middle of a street, standing in the curb and staring at what must be an old, abandoned factory.  _ Monmouth Manufacturing _ , reads in faded out letters.

 

A few cars drive past him, and with nothing else to do, Adam tries the door, walking in and climbing up the steps once it falls open. The stairs lead him to another door, locked this time, but his body takes over before his mind can finish processing everything, and Adam is jiggling the door in an easy, practiced way, causing it to give in, lock and all. 

 

Inside, Adam blinks in surprise. It’s an apartment. There’s a couch and an impressively accurate miniature of a city made of cardboard sitting in the middle of what might be the living room. He’s not sure how, but he knows it’s fairly accurate, he knows it’s a model of this city.  _ Henrietta,  _ his mind supplies. Didn’t he grow up here? 

 

The knowledge is fuzzy, covered by a dense fog. The twist in his gut, on the other hand, is sharp.

 

Shrugging off the odd feelings, Adam decides to keep walking, keep exploring. There’s a fridge in what might have also been a bathroom, and he shudders, nose wrinkling in distaste. That’s hardly hygienic. But what catches his eyes are the three closed doors in front of him; bedrooms, he figures. They are all identical, standard, plain-looking, and Adam can’t tell which one he should open. 

 

_ Magician,  _ the whisper returns, even without any trees here. But that’s not right, is it? There’s a mint plant sitting on the desk, surrounded by books and notebooks and maps.  _ Memento, Magician. _

 

A shiver runs down his spine, and Adam knows. If only he could get one of these doors to open, he’ll find his memories inside. He’s so certain of it, he knows it on his bones. 

 

_Oportet festinare_ the mint plant says, _you must hurry,_ and its smell fills the air. A pair of glasses, brown hair, a diplomatic smile, flash past his eyes. 

 

He shakes his head, focusing on the present. The three doors stand there, staring him down, and Adam suddenly wonders what will he do if he opens one of them to find it empty. He doesn’t know, cry maybe. Scream, probably.

 

Taking a tentative step forward, Adam follows the tugging on his core. One of the doors call to him louder than the others, and after another step closer, he can see the dents and cracks on the frame, the result of years of being slammed closed. This too, he inexplicably knows to be true.

 

Before he can touch the doorknob, though, before he can try and see if it’s locked.  _ It is _ , he knows, even if he hopes it would yield to him.  _ Before _ , a loud thud echoes through the apartment. 

 

A bird had crashed against the window.

 

Adam watches the cracks growing on the glass, hurries to look down at the street. On the sidewalk, the bird lays broken, wings bent unnaturally, blood beginning to pool around it.

 

_ A raven  _ had crashed against the window.

 

Adam makes a choked up noise on the back of his throat, keeps staring at the dead thing, rooted in place, unable to tear his gaze away. The blood is a deep red, oozing slowly, sluggishly– until it’s not. It turns to black gradually, and in the blink of an eye. It thins out, spreading across the concrete, running to the asphalt. The sight makes his stomach churn, nausea hitting him in an overwhelming wave. Adam is going to be sick, and he’s suddenly terrified he’s going to throw up that black liquid. Feeling worse, he can taste bile climbing up his throat, turning even bitter as it claws its way up, and the black will fill his mouth until it overflows– 

 

Another bird flies straight to the glass, right in front of his face, and Adam startles, stumbling back with a scream. The raven slides slowly down the window, leaving a trail of black goo and a web of cracks. Another raven crashes to the right. Then, another. And another.  _ And another. _

 

Looking up, Adam sees a black cloud approaching fast in the distance, the flap of their wings rising to a deafening buzzing. It sounds like a swarm of hornets, but he can see them clearly now.

 

It’s ravens. Hundreds of them. 

 

They begin crashing against the window, throwing themselves at the glass one after the other.

 

_ It’s going to break,  _  Adam thinks, a little hysterically.  _ The window won’t hold. _

 

If he dies on his dream, will he die in real life?

 

Does it matter?

 

Their blood turns from red to black before they even begin falling down. Some of them caw, some make a gurgling sound, black pouring from their beak. They fall, even before they finish dying, they fall. 

 

As the glass cracks dangerously, a spiderweb of fissures, Adam can see the black swirling, the trails connecting with each other, until there are dozens of thick tendrils spreading all over the window, like tiny rivers running upstream. They cover the cracks, even as the birds keep coming. 

 

_ It’s trying to get in,  _ Adam realizes. 

 

Out of everything so far, this is what Adam is surest of:  _ if the black goo gets inside, he’ll die. _

 

_ Nulla tempus _ **_,_ ** the mint plant whispers urgently, and the sound is drowned out against the cacophony of noises drifting from outside. There is no time for what? _ Expergiscimini. _

  
  


The glass creaks, straining against the continuing abuse. Adam can almost feel the glee oozing from the black sludge. It’s cold and malicious, and he shivers, terror gripping his heart and threatening to pull him under. 

 

_ Expergiscimini _

 

Adam can’t bring himself to move, to hide, to fight back. He can only watch helplessly as the window shakes under the pressure, cracks growing and growing  _ and growing–  _

 

_ Wake up. ) _

 

*

 

He wakes up with a gasp, heart thundering on his chest. The blood on his veins feels as if replaced with lead, in a constant chemical reaction with the adrenaline running through his body. 

 

There’s not enough oxygen in the room, and Adam thanks whatever deity there is that he doesn’t have a roommate this year. He throws off his covers, sits up, his head resting on his hands.

 

_ What the fuck is going on? _

 

*

 

The next day, Adam finds himself sitting alone in a bar near campus, a lonely glass of vodka in front of him.

 

It’s the first time he stepped inside a bar since his 21st birthday, he can legally be here, and he can legally buy any drink he wants, alcohol and all. Up until now, he had an excuse ready for anyone and for himself when drinking came up, he didn’t have to think about it too much, he didn’t have to decide for himself. He could be scared in secret.

 

Now, Adam’s still scared, and there are far more witnesses to his indecision.

 

_ I am not my father, _ he thinks over and over like a mantra on his head, and  _ this _ , he knows it’s true, it’s something no one can take away from him. But the smell of alcohol is washing over him in waves, sweet and overwhelming, nauseatingly strong in this place. His stomach turns dangerously, and how sad would it be if Adam threw up before even downing his first shot?

 

It’s a Friday night, and the bar is crowded, the shitty music almost drowned by all these voices. Adam hates it. He stares some more at the glass, watches the ice cubes melting drop by drop, wonders if he’ll pick it up before they completely melt. He doubts it.

 

“Are you planning on drinking that, or glare until it catches fire?” says a voice at his right, a man sliding on the empty stool beside him. “Because I can tell you right now, man, it’s not that kind of drink.”

 

The man seems to be around Adam’s age, blue eyes and a shaved head, and if it were any other day, if they had met in any other way, Adam doesn’t think he’d be able to find it in himself to turn him down, isn’t sure if he’d even want to. As it is, though, he’s really not in the mood. No matter how the lights catch on the blue of this guy’s eyes, or how the dangerous curve of his smirk calls for Adam’s attention. “No offense,” Adam says without glancing up, “but it’s none of your business.”

 

There’s a tired sigh, and he almost looks up, because that’s not the reaction he had been expecting. The man drums his fingers on the counter, once, twice, then sighs again. “Look, there isn’t a good way to do this,” he picks up Adam’s drink, downs it in one go, and Adam is about to ask him what the fuck he thinks he’s doing, but when he turns to fully face him, the words die on his throat. It’s not that this guy is attractive,  _ he is _ , but that’s not why. It’s just that  _ his everything  _ feels so,  _ so _ familiar, more than anything on this week has felt, more than anything these whole three years have felt, that it stops him on his tracks. “But it’s time to come home, Adam.”

 

“How do you know my name?” He asks sharply, the surprise and the alarm are easier to process, even if they feel as wrong as the english language on his dreams. “Who the hell are you?”

 

Something flickers on the man’s eyes, too quickly for Adam to tell, but he looks like he needs something stronger than a cheap shot. He runs a hand over his shaved head, “what do you remember?”

 

Anger flares inside him, the frustration welled up from this week stoking the fire. “I’m  _ sick  _ of being asked this,” Adam pulls out his wallet, slamming down a few dollar bills on the bar. “I have no fucking idea what’s going on or who the fuck you are, but leave me the hell alone.”

 

“Wait–,” he calls, one hand hovering awkwardly, as if he had been about to grab Adam’s wrist but thought better of it. Maybe that’s why Adam pauses, maybe it has nothing to do with the way his heart sinks at the thought of walking away. “Wait. We need to talk.”

 

“I don’t need to do anything,” he spits out, ready to turn back around, head back to his car and drive back to his dorm. “I don’t have time for this, and I don’t even know you.”

 

“Yes, yes, you fucking do,” the man says, almost softly, the swearing somehow dusting off the edges of his voice, “my name’s Ronan Lynch, and we need to talk about your dreams.”

 

Suddenly all the loud voices, the clinking glasses, the shitty music– it fades into background noise.  _ “Excuse me?” _

 

“Come on, Parrish,” the man,  _ Ronan _ , shakes his head irritably, “don’t play dumb. I know you’ve got to have started remembering, too. Everyone has, even Cheng.”

 

“How do you know about the dreams?” Adam asks, stepping closer again. If this guy has any answers, if he can tell Adam what the hell he’s forgotten, then, well, there’s no choice here. “And who is everyone?”

 

“Gansey. Blue. Henry.” Ronan counts off, smirking pleased when Adam reclaims his seat, “and I know because they’ve been calling me about it nonstop since it began, fuckers won’t leave me the fuck alone for five minutes.”

 

The cursing manages to drag a startled laugh out of Adam, and it seems to catch Ronan off guard, his lips curling in a smile for a second before he schools it back into practiced indifference. “Should I recognize any of these names?”

 

Disappointment washes over his eyes, “yeah, you fucking should. But look, it’s easier if you tell me what you remember and we’ll go from there.”

 

“Why should I trust you?”

 

“I don’t lie,” he says, “you’d know that if you’d just hurried up and remembered me.”

 

“Oh, I’m sorry, is my new found amnesia inconveniencing you?” Adam snaps, unable to bite back the sarcasm. Still, somehow this brings his world a little less off-kilter.

 

“It is, it really is, you have no fucking idea how inconvenient it is.”

 

“Well, shit, you’re lucky I forgot you’re this much of an asshole, or I would’ve left when I had the chance.” He rolls his eyes, “all I know is that I’ve been dreaming about some forest that speaks only in shitty Latin. And is adamant that I should be remembering up something.”

 

“Just that?”

 

“Yeah, I mean,” he drags a hand across his face, “there’s been– there’s a raven sometimes. It follows me around on the forest. And sometimes, there’s– I see things. Like, flashes of memories I think. A cave? With creepy animal skeletons? And a forest, the same forest but there’s a lake, too. An abandoned factory? I don’t know, they’re not exactly helpful.”

 

“Cabeswater, that’s the forest’s name,” Ronan tells him, “the factory– that’s Monmouth Manufacturing, where Gansey, Noah and I lived, we turned it into a sort of flat. And the cave with the skeleton is where we found Blue’s mom,” his face darkens, mouth curling into a sneer, “and the Third Sleeper.”

 

Adam feels once again dizzy, a headache blooming on his mind. “There is so much to unpack there,” he laughs helplessly, “I don’t even know where to start.”

 

“Ronan,” it’s a testament on how distracted Adam is that he’s missed this stranger approaching until he was standing beside Ronan, a frown on his face, “we agreed to wait until everyone was here.”

 

“Fuck that,” Ronan says, shrugging, “ _ you  _ agreed to that, I told you I wasn’t waiting shit.”

 

Adam turns to look, dragging his gaze away from Ronan and the way the light dances off his eyes.

 

“Parrish, this is–”

 

_ “Gansey.”  _ Adam breathes, suddenly hit by flashbacks. Dozens of memories, places where he thought he’d been alone, where he can see now made no sense for him to have been alone, are slowly being filled back with Gansey. The day he stopped to fix the Pig, walking through Aglionby halls, Monmouth Manufacturing, Nino’s, and– white noise rises just as suddenly, halting the wave of memories and bringing a sharp stabbing pain to his head. Adam distantly feels his own hands coming to clutch at his temple, hears vague sounds that might have been words.

 

He doesn’t know how long it takes for his head to clear out, for the pain to subside, but when he comes to himself, Adam is sitting slumped in the backseat of a cab. There’s a warm body to his right, an arm around his shoulder to keep him more or less upright. On the passenger seat, Gansey is talking quietly.

 

“Sorry,” Adam says, wincing as his voice breaks off at the end, and forces himself to pull away. He doesn’t know why he finds it so hard to, hates himself a little for the blush he knows must be tinting his face. “What happened?”

 

It hits him that he should probably be more concerned about the fact he’s in a car with two strangers, when he doesn’t remember how he got there, doesn’t know where they’re going.

 

Except, that’s not the first time he blacked out, is it? He’s lost time before. His freshman year is full of blanks on his memories he can’t fill, no matter how he tries to wrack his brain looking for them now. Entire weekends, vacations, extended holidays. And even before that, his high school years, it’s so fuzzy, so out of focus, so hazy, he wouldn’t be able to tell the name of his teachers.

 

And the thing is, meeting Gansey, it’s beginning to trickle some light on those dark spots. Where he would come up empty, there’s crumbles for him to follow, a thread for him to pull.

 

“You remembered Gansey, and then freaked the fuck out,” Ronan says, pulling his arm from Adam’s shoulder, crossing them over his chest. “Thought you were having a goddamn stroke or something. We’re going back to the hotel now.”

 

It’s something in the way Ronan had draped his arm over Adam, or maybe how he looked at him back in the bar, or maybe the flicker of emotion that flashes on his eyes every once in a while. Or, perhaps, it’s just wishful thinking. Either way, Adam can’t help blurting out, “were we friends?”

 

Ronan frowns, scoffing. His face becomes even more closed off as he shifts on his seat, away from Adam. “Something like that. You were better friends with Gansey, anyway.”

 

“Everyone is better friends with Gansey,” Adam says, pauses, “although, I’m not sure how I know that.”

 

“It’s true,” he shrugs, “except for the Maggot, but look how  _ that  _ turned out.”

 

“ _ Ronan,”  _ Gansey warns from the passenger seat, his voice gaining an edge again. “Don’t listen to him, Adam. He’s still bitter you don’t remember him.”

 

“I’m sorry?” Adam offers. “To be fair, I’m pretty bitter about this whole thing, too.”

 

“Of course you are,” Gansey sighs, “we’ll explain better at the hotel. Jane and Henry are waiting for us.”

 

“Jane?”

 

“The Maggot.” 

 

“ _ Blue, _ ” Gansey corrects, “Jane’s her nickname.”

 

“Wait,  _ Jane _ is the nickname?” Adam asks, bewildered more at his lack of surprise than anything else. “God, you guys are so weird.”

 

Ronan laughs, a hollow, bitter noise that rattles all around the car, and Adam startles, blinking at how unhappy it sounds. “You don’t know the fucking half of it.”

 

Irritation bristles under his skin. Adam is well aware he doesn’t know the half of it, trust him,  _ he’s wildly aware.  _ He scowls, curling up on himself further away from Ronan, presses himself against the door and turns his attention to the window.

 

Cars pass them by quickly, a blur of colors and lights. It’s well into the night now, but New Haven is a college town, and this close to campus nothing really sleeps. Gansey seems to have resumed talking to their driver and Ronan looks done with the whole thing. 

 

Adam sighs, watching the concrete buildings be left behind, and wishes he could see the coastline.

 

*


	2. pulvis et umbra sumus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the one where things aren't exactly better, but they might be starting to look up.

 

The hotel room is as fancy as the exterior had suggested, and Adam is both impressed and revolted by it. One night here probably costs more than a month’s worth of grocery. Still, he reminds himself he is not here to pick fights, and focus on the people sitting on the bed.

 

Sitting against the headboard, there is a man with impossibly tall dark hair and asian features. On his hands, a tiny bee buzzes happily, floating up a few inches before landing on his palms again. It makes a whirring noise, then a beep, and Adam realizes it’s a machine.  _ Robobee,  _ his mind supplies.  _ Henry Cheng,  _ it follows. Henry is looking as composed as ever, lounging on the bed, but Adam can see the haggard look on his eyes, the slight hunch of his shoulders.

 

When he sees Adam, a delighted grin spreads across his lips and Robobee flies up, up, up, buzzing all around the room.

 

“ _ Adam!”  _ The shout comes from the girl who had been draped across the foot of the bed, legs dangling back and forth, when he had come in. She sits up with a jolt, spranging to her feet and in a second Adam is being tackled in a hug. It makes him stumble, take a step back, grunting with the force of the collision.  _ “Adam Parrish,  _ I can’t believe I forgot you!”

 

This must be Blue, Adam thinks, and as soon as the thought crosses his mind, it clicks. More of his memories come into focus, blurred pictures sharpen into visible figures. Gansey and Henry and Blue. Adam grins, breathing in deeply. “Hey, Blue. It’s good to see you.”

 

She tightens the hug, her hands fisted on the back of his shirt, before she lets him go, taking a step back to properly look at him. Her grin is infectious, if a little sad. “It’s been so  _ long. _ ”

 

Adam doesn’t know what to say to that. Until three seconds ago her name had been just a noun. Now, he’s floundering for words, his memory still not even close to fixed, there are so many missing hours– missing  _ days.  _

 

“Well, tough shit, Maggot,” Ronan snorts, throwing himself in one of the chairs pushed close to the bed. He’s lost his coat somewhere between the lobby and the chair, and his shirt collar slips, showing a glimpse of dark ink on the back of his neck. Adam burns, burns, burns, with curiosity. “At least you weren’t the one stuck with the crazy singing lady.”

 

Blue’s grin sharpens again, turning into a even sharper smirk. “I’d pay to see that,” she shudders, “Gwenllian and Calla and you in a room. How is no one dead yet?”

 

“Maybe they are,” he says haughtily, “you just haven’t remembered yet.”

 

“ _ Too soon,”  _ Gansey sounds vaguely nauseated, shrugging off his own jacket and coming to sit on the foot of the bed before Blue claims it for herself again. “ _ Way _ too soon.”

 

“It’s been three years,” Ronan shrugs, but the line of his shoulder is tense and Adam bets he regrets his own words too, “it’s what he would have wanted, anyway.”

 

“Who?” Adam asks, because someone important is clearly dead and you can’t mourn what you don’t remember.

 

He’s not sure he wants to remember this. 

 

“Who died?”

 

Silence falls in the room. Gansey isn’t looking at Adam anymore, instead he seems to be fascinated by the swirling floral patterns on the sheets. Blue sways once, shuffles back to the bed. When she sits down, her whole body is pressed against Gansey, thighs to shoulder. Henry hasn’t moved from his spot, but Adam sees the way he stiffens, Robobee coming to buzz by his head and even its half mechanical whirring sounds subdued.

 

Adam doesn’t want to look at Ronan, doesn’t want to know what his face will show. There’s a whole lot of thing doesn’t want as of now. 

 

“I think,” Henry hesitates, speaking slowly as if waiting for someone to stop him, “there will be time for this later. It’s already quite a lot to process as it is.”

 

“Yes,” Gansey nods fervently, grasping the excuse like a lifeline. “Why don’t you tell us what you remember, Adam?”

 

“What I remember?” He echoes, hating to be back on the center of attention, fidgets, clears his throat, starts again. “It’s– I mean…”

 

Gansey looks on expectantly, smiling earnestly, beatifically, beautifully.

 

“Hey, Dick,” Ronan cuts in, mockingly pleasant, “don’t be a dick. What is this, an interrogation? I’m too fucking tired to play shitty twenty questions.”

 

“Oh.  _ Oh.  _ Absolutely,” he agrees, smile turning sheepish, “I’m sorry, Adam. You must be exhausted. Henry is right, there will be time for questions later.”

 

On cue, Blue yawns. “We should all get some sleep while we can, I suppose.” She gets to her feet, stretching. “Where are the keys, Richie Rich?”

 

Adam watches as Gansey begins looking for the room keys, dislodging Henry in the process and dragging him on his quest. There’s an air of barely controlled chaos around them all, and Adam is surprised to find he likes it,  _ welcomes  _ it. Something fond and warm stirs on his chest, filling an empty space he hadn’t realized had been there before, but is now hungrier than ever.

 

A hand shakes his shoulder, and Adam blinks, looking up to find Ronan beside him, a key card dangling from his fingers. “Come on, Parrish, you look like shit.”

 

“Thanks,” Adam tries to scrounge up at least a little sarcasm, but it’s hard when Gansey and Blue and Henry are still searching for the keys and loudly sniping at each other in the easy way of old friends. And Adam, he’s– he’s not there yet. He’s still a stranger in a strange land. It’s so very overwhelming, being here, being a part of this. Adam is exhausted; content, but  _ exhausted. _ “I should go home.”

 

Ronan scoffs. “ _ Please.  _ We didn’t drag your sorry ass all the way here for you to leave again. Besides, those idiots would probably just follow you home like lost fucking puppies.” Adam snorts, following him outside. “Goddamn worst case of separation anxiety I’ve ever seen.”

 

The hallway is thankfully empty, and Adam takes the opportunity to just  _ breathe.  _ He soaks up the quiet, the white noise, the reprieve. He opens his eyes. “Thank you.”

 

“Whatever, man,” Ronan shrugs, probably aiming for nonchalance and failing. “Gansey booked Blue her own room, said he didn’t want to presume anything, it went as well as expected.” He laughs, and it sounds a little less brittle than before. It almost doesn’t sounds like glass shattering. Adam feels strangely victorious. “So, she moved to his room to prove him wrong, you get the extra room.”

 

Adam isn’t stupid, he can see what Ronan is doing, telling the facts so it doesn’t feel like charity, so it looks as if  _ Adam  _ is doing them a favor. He does it naturally, without missing a beat, and Adam wonders if this is something he used to do before, wishes he could remember.

 

Why hasn’t he remembered Ronan at all yet?

 

“Are you going to stand there all night?” He asks testily, worrying at the leather bands on his wrist, “I’ve got better things to do.”

knows you might get yourself lost.”

 

“No, right. What’s the room number?”

 

“Let’s just go, come on. I’ll walk you there.” And then, because Ronan couldn’t be caught doing something nice, he adds, “god 

Adam sighs dramatically, ducking his chin to hide his grin, and follows Ronan downs the hall. 

 

“Cheng’s that door on the right,” he gestures vaguely as they walk past the row of single rooms, “and Blue-and-Gansey are on that one.”

 

“That’s a single.”

 

“It is,” Ronan smirks, clearly amused by the entire situation, “I’m assuming Gansey will try to take the floor. Or get kicked out of the bed.”

 

“I don’t think those two statements are mutually exclusive.” 

 

Ronan snorts, opens his mouth to say something, but then thinks better of it. His grin slips off his lips as quickly as it had appeared. Adam tries not to take it personally. They come to a stop in front of one of the standard doors. “And this is you.”

 

There’s a key card thrust suddenly in his hands and Adam fumbles to get the door open. The inside of the room looks exactly the same as the other one, unsurprisingly, if only a little more bare. Definitely quieter. Before he can decide if he should invite the other man in or not, a dark lump on the bed moves, taking flight towards the door. Adam  _ ducks _ . “Jesus  _ christ.” _

 

Wings flap, Ronan chuckles. “So  _ now _ you decide to show up, uh? Have you been hiding in here all day you little traitor– are you okay?”

 

The question is directed to Adam, but Adam can’t answer. He’s rooted to the spot again.

 

It’s a raven.

 

It’s Ronan’s  _ pet  _ raven.

 

And it looks just like the one in his dreams.

 

“Dude,” Ronan snaps his fingers in front of his face, “are you blacking out again?”

 

“Your bird has been visiting my dreams!”

 

Adam stares. At Ronan. At the raven. Ronan stares back. A perfectly mismatched set: Adam, inside the room, wide eyed and silent; Ronan, outside in the hall, stoic and swearing up a storm of increasingly compound curses. It’s kind of impressive.

 

“That’s not possible,” Ronan scowls, shouldering past him inside the room and immediately beginning to pace, bird perched loyally on his shoulder. “That’s not how it fucking works.”

 

“Right,” Adam glowers, hands curling around the doorknob until his knuckles go white. “ Because everything about this is so fucking normal.”

 

“What the fuck did you dream?”

 

Adam makes an impatient sound. “I already told you at the bar,” he crosses the room to the bed in two long strides, managing to sit down before his knees could give out. “Now, do you have something useful to add, or are you just going to keep swearing at no one in particular?”

 

Ronan’s smile is all teeth, sharp and dangerous and savage. “Maybe I’m swearing at you.”

 

“You’re not,” Adam shifts, leaning back on his hands, “what does it mean that I saw your raven in my dreams?”

 

“ _ Nothing,”  _ he pauses his pacing only long enough to spit it out, “because that’s not how it motherfucking works, dumbass.”

 

“How  _ what  _ works?” Frustration is swelling on his chest, hot and searing, and Adam has to close his eyes before it all spills down the hotel carpet. It would look an awfully lot like blood, he thinks. “I’m tired of this vague bulshit, and I’m tired of people expecting me to just know what the hell is going on.”

 

There’s silence, and Adam opens his eyes, half-hoping Ronan had stormed out. He hadn’t. Ronan is still standing mid-pacing, looking a little shell-shocked, as if the extent of Adam’s amnesia had only now sunk in. Maybe it had. Or maybe it proved itself to stretch far longer than they had imagined. 

 

Before either of them can figure out what the hell to say next, a commotion rises in the hallway, and soon after Blue skids to a halt in front of their open door. She braces a hand against the doorway to ease her sudden stop, looking between Ronan, standing frozen, and Adam, half lying on the bed. Her grin is slow and delighted.

 

Gansey and Henry stumble behind her a minute later, breathless and yet perfectly composed. They, too, seem to take in the room with interest. 

 

Adam is about to snap, about to tell them to either share with the class or mind their own damn business, still riding on the same bubbling frustration, and that’s the only reason he’s paying enough attention to catch the questioning look Gansey throws Ronan’s way and the subtle shake of the man’s head in answer. 

 

The exchange lasts nothing more than a couple of seconds, gone in between the blink of his eyes, and Adam feels he just missed something important again.

 

“Where’s the _ fucking  _ fire?” Ronan demands, crossing his arms over his chest. His black shirt stretches over his arms, Adam looks away. 

 

“We thought Adam had left,” Gansey explains, unrepentant. “But you had disappeared, too. So we had to check.”

 

“Damn separation anxiety,” he mutters under his breath, resuming his pacing, “I swear to  _ god _ .”

 

Blue nods, leaning more of her weight on the doorway so that Henry could see inside better. “You say that,” her grin turns sly, more of a smirk than real smile, “but you’re the one that left your room just to walk him to his.”

 

_ “Sargent,”  _ Ronan growls, looking as if considering the merits of murder. 

 

“Well, this is all very interesting,” Henry cuts in before Adam’s hotel room becomes a crime scene, “but here I thought we had all agreed this was best adjourned until tomorrow? Gansey-boy, say, I don’t suppose I could convince you to join me in the bar downstairs?”

 

“Sorry, Henry,” Gansey shakes his head, hiding a yawn on the sleeves of his very professor-ish sweater, “I’m afraid I wouldn’t be good company tonight, anyway.”

 

“Nonsense, you, my friend, are always good company,” Henry says, waving him off, “but I can see you are exhausted and I’ll admit I’m feeling the jetlag still, myself. Although, it leaves me a bit too restless to sleep.” He surveys the room, sizing up the rest of them. “I hope it goes without saying that my invitation extends to all of you.”

 

“Hard fucking pass,” Ronan scowls.

 

Adam sits up properly, shrugging, “I’ve had enough excitement for a day, thanks.”

 

Blue is silent, pondering over her options. She glances at Gansey, then at Adam and his bare room, then at Ronan with his impossible bird climbing from his shoulder to his head back to his shoulder, before finally turning to Henry. “You know what, sure. This is just too depressing for a non-alcoholic night.”

 

She stands on her tiptoes to kiss Gansey’s cheek, and the look on his face is so devoted, so smitten, so  _ in love,  _ Adam has to avert his gaze. His heart gives a violent twitch, reminding him of his empty dorm room waiting for him after this is all over.

 

They leave, Henry and Blue heading to the hotel bar, Gansey to his own room, and everything is quiet again. The raven caws, flying off Ronan and settling on the bed’s headboard like some sort of victorian gargoyle. 

 

“Please, take your pet bird with you,” Adam says, “I’m not sleeping with it staring me down.”

 

“ _ She, _ ” Ronan corrects him, “and Chainsaw does what she wants. Get the fuck over yourself.”

 

Adam sighs, weights down the pros and cons of physically throwing Ronan and his weird ass raven out of the room. He’d probably be successful, he’d have the element of surprise on his advantage. Instead, he sighs again, loudly, obnoxiously, pointedly.

 

“Whatever,” Ronan rolls his eyes, making for the door, “breakfast is at nine, be there if you don’t want ‘em kicking down your door.”

 

“Hey,” he calls, irritated, before the man could get out of sight, “aren’t you forgetting something?.”

 

Ronan pauses, looks blankly at Adam, then meaningfully at Chainsaw. “Keep an eye on him.”

 

In retrospect, what really pisses him off, is not the irritation, or the frustration, or even the distance he has to cross from the bed to the door, or how he must have looked like a crazy person throwing insults at Ronan’s retreating back. 

 

No, what really gets under his skin and boils his blood is how the impulse to jump from the mattress and run after Ronan went from a conscious, dismissable thought to the actual flurry of motions in less than it took him to decide. It’s not that it was out of his hands, it’s not that it wasn’t a choice, it’s just that Adam didn’t think before deciding and Adam always thinks about everything. He is careful about his words, he is careful about his accent, he is careful about his things. 

 

Adam is an overthinker, recklessness isn’t something he can afford.

 

Still, being annoyed with himself and with Ronan is better than dwelling on his missing memories; it’s more tangible, grounding, familiar, and falling asleep in the hotel’s soft, warm bed is easier than he figured it’d be. He manages just enough consciousness to think fleetingly,  _ this might be trouble,  _ before drifting off.

 

*

 

( Adam opens his eyes and he’s back in the forest again. Relief washes over him. All this green puts him at ease, lulling him almost back to sleep.

 

“Idyllic, isn’t it?”

 

There is a boy standing beside Adam, blonde and soft and smiling. A melancholic surge of fondness bursts through his chest at the sight.  _ “Noah,”  _ he breathes.

 

“Hi, Adam,” Noah grins, “took you long enough.”

 

“How’s it possible?” He blinks, “how are you here? You…”

 

“Died? Yeah. You can say it out loud, it doesn’t bother me. Besides,” Noah knocks shoulders with him, “thinking or speaking, it doesn’t make much of a difference here.”

 

“Where  _ is  _ here?”

 

“You don’t remember yet, do you?” Adam shakes his head. “Don’t look so sad, it won’t take too long now. You’ve met the others, right?”

 

A breeze rustles the leaves of nearby trees. Adam wonders why they are so quiet today, and if it has anything to do with Noah.

 

_ Noah.  _

 

Adam knows the boy is dead, he knows it like he knows the reasons behind each of his scars: with a phantom ache and hazy images, lingering terror and vitriolic guilt.  

 

“I did,” Adam says, laying down in the grass, feeling the plants gently curling around his ankles. “But I don’t remember much still. I don’t remember Ronan at all.”

 

Noah sits beside him, cross legged, face tilted towards the sun. A sunflower of a boy. Adam aches. Flowers uncurl from the soil, blooming all around them.  

 

“You will,” he says confidently, “in time, I know you will.”

 

“I think something happened that summer,” Adam tells him, feeling the truth on his words as he speaks them. “The summer we all left for college. Something happened that made us all forget.”

 

Noah hums, picking the nearest flowers. New ones swiftly grow in their place.

 

“And it has to do with whatever happened in Henrietta that I can’t remember.”

 

“ _ Yet _ ,” Noah adds.

 

“Yet _ ,”  _ Adam agrees, wishing he could have the same certainty. Then, “how are you here?”

 

“Am I real,” Noah says, “or is this just a dream, you mean?”

 

“I guess. Or a memory.”

 

“Both. Neither.” He shrugs, unconcerned, “does it matter?”

 

“Maybe. No.” Adam pauses, thinking it over. “A little.”

 

A sunflower grows in place of a dandelion. Adam feels the grass blades curl around his fingers, opens his eyes. Noah is making a flower crown, the petals changing with the light. “Here, it doesn’t make much of a difference.”

 

“Where is this?”

 

“A memory of a place,” Noah tells him, carefully threading a violet with a light blue rose, “is a dream of a dream still a dream?”

 

Adam frowns. “What?”

 

“Nevermind, it’s too soon for that, anyway.” He huffs, picking another flower. Noah looks up, fingers still working on his crown, and regards Adam for a while, expression thoughtful. “Man, you’re going to be  _ so _ pissed when you get your memories back.”

 

That’s not news. Adam is already pissed now. Everyone kinds of is, even if Gansey tries to be diplomatic about it. 

 

“No, really,” Noah repeats, snorting, then grows serious, “I would be, too, if I had forgotten all that.”

 

“I remember you laughing at Monmouth Manufacturing,” Adam says, trying to grasp more solid memories out of the fog over his brain. “And throwing glitter all over Gansey’s books.”

 

“That was a good day,” he agrees, smiling wistfully, “I remember that, too.”

 

Adam hums agreeably, it’s hard to feel extreme emotions here. Everything is mellow and peaceful and quiet, anger or frustrations slide off him effortlessly. “Will you help me?”

 

“Have you ever played tug-of-war?” Noah asks in response. Adam looks over, puzzled. “Have you, Adam?” He nudges his thigh lightly with his foot.

 

A flashback of an elementary school gym class fleets through Adam’s mind. The rope feels rough against his palm, burning his skin with the strain as he digs his heel on the floor, and  _ pulls.  _ “Yeah. Why?”

 

“Good. Did you win?”

 

Did he? Adam frowns. He recalls the helpless feeling of being on the tipping point, forces evened out, where any team could win. And then a kid had tripped, setting off a domino effect on the other team, until they had all let go of the rope. Adam and his team had felt the blowback and stumbled back hard. Still, the coach’s whistle had cut through the aches and sores, and victory had been sweetly important like all stupid things do in elementary school. “I think so.”

 

“Nice. You should hold on to that.”

 

The earth beneath them shakes, rumbling low and echoing all over the clearing. The grass blades retreat from his ankles and wrists and fingers, and Adam sits up, shaking off leaves and twigs from his hair. “What was that?”

 

Noah isn’t smiling anymore, instead he looks sadly at Adam. “Time’s up. You’re waking up.” Adam’s heart clenches painfully on his chest. “You have to go now, but it’s gonna be okay, Adam.”

 

The ground trembles again. “Will you come back again?”

 

“I don’t know,” he answers truthfully, “it’s complicated. I really have to go.” Noah turns to him, placing his flower crown on Adam’s head. He squints his eyes, judging the results, then nods pleased. “Give my love to everyone, will you? Goodbye, Adam Parrish.”

 

Another earthquake hits, forcing Adam to look away to steady himself. When he looks back, Noah is gone, five white clovers blooming on his place.

 

Reaching up, Adam gingerly picks up the flower crown. It’s beautifully, impossibly, woven together. It smells like spring and laughter and happiness.

 

And it’s entirely made of forget-me-nots. )

 

*

 

Despite Ronan’s warning last night, the cafeteria is still more than half empty and Henry is sitting alone on a table for six when Adam walks in. He waves when he sees Adam, his movements slightly out of sync, glitching with delayed responses, and raises his mug in greeting.

 

Adam fills his own to the brim, throws enough for a sandwich on a plate, and sits on the empty seat in front of Henry. “Morning.”

 

“Is it?” Henry sluggishly asks, eyes hidden by large sunglasses, “I can’t quite tell.”

 

“Hungover?”

 

Henry sips his coffee before answering. “There is a sledgehammer fixing nails in my brain,” the sunglasses slide a little, perching crookedly at the tip of his nose, “do you have to be so loud?”

 

Adam laughs quietly, trying to keep his voice down. “Sorry, man.”

 

“Liar,” he huffs, picking the sunglasses before it fell and tucking it on his shirt’s pocket. “How did you sleep?”

 

“Good,” Adam lays two slices of bread on his plate, side by side, then pauses, taking inventory of the ingredients he brought with him on the table. “Weird dream, but what else is new.”

 

A family walks in, the husband and wife holding hands and the two kids chattering loudly behind them, and Henry winces, running a hand through his hair. Even with what looks like a very painful hungover, a late night and general exhaustion, it is perfectly spiked. If Adam wasn’t just as tired, he’d might be self-conscious enough to try and fix his own hair. As it is, his bedhead will have to do. 

 

“So,” Adam says, covering one of the bread with a slice of cheese, “how’s Columbia?”

 

That’s not an information offered last night, and it weights on the words, but Henry only tilts his head, resting his chin on one hand, and thankfully doesn’t ask him how he knows about business school. “Good, although,” he yawns, “awfully boring, compared to the magic of Welsh kings.”

 

The new information is looked over on his mind, then stored away for later. Adam finds it the easiest to talk to Henry out of them all, the air feels lighter between them than with any of the others. Maybe because he has less memories with him, or they don’t carry as much attachments and feelings and threads to pull. It doesn’t mean any more or less, it’s just closer to the surface. 

 

“But you don’t remember that yet, do you?” Henry blinks slowly, sipping his coffee, “a shame, really.” He pauses, attention drifting to the windows, eyes far away, “there are wondrous things in this world, Adam Parrish, and you used to be one of them.”

 

It’s easier to talk with Henry Cheng.

 

It’s not easier to understand him than any of the other puzzle pieces.

 

“I don’t think I remember much of anything, not really.” Adam finishes his sandwich, but doesn’t move to take a bite, “I remember knowing the lot of you like you know a movie. There are scenes play by play, but I’m watching it all from the screen. It doesn’t feel like it happened to me.” Looking down, he exhales. “Do you think it always felt like that?”

 

Henry regards him with clinical eyes, his mug forgotten on the table, and the white light of the restaurant gives his clothes a washed out coloring. “I don’t know.” He places his hands on either side of his empty plate, fingers displayed, and Adam watches fascinated the gleaming of his rings. “I didn’t really know you before the magic, but I like to think we were something like friends after. I won’t pretend to know what goes through that impossible brain of yours, god knows I’ve wondered more than once, but what I  _ can  _ tell you, is that you made a lot of sacrifices for this.”

 

Not knowing what could possibly be an acceptable answer to this, Adam swallows thickly, nodding, “okay.”

 

“Now, now,” Henry resumes his position, chin on his hand, “this is an awfully heavy topic for such an early hour.” His smile is polite and practiced when he speaks again. “So, taking Yale by storm?”

 

Adam grins easily, pride buzzing on his veins. “It’s hard, but it’s worth it.”

 

“ _ That’s what she said _ ,” Blue says through a mouthful of yogurt, throwing herself at the seat beside Adam. She seems to pause, backtracking around her words, then wrinkles her nose. “Can we forget I said that?”

 

Gansey takes the seat at Henry’s right, carefully laying his bowl of oatmeal on the table. “Said what?”

 

“Nothing,” Blue pats his hand, “absolutely nothing.” She looks around, eyes scanning the restaurant, “where’s Ronan?”

 

“Haven’t seen him since last night,” Adam shrugs. “His hellish bird wasn’t in my room when I woke up this morning either.”

 

Blue coughs violently at his side, choking on her toast. She washes it down with orange juice, still gasping faintly as she speaks, “he slept in your room?”

 

“No?” Adam frowns, “left his damn bird there. The thing refused to leave the bedpost, like some infernal gargoyle.”

 

“That’s.” She pauses. “That sounds like him, to be honest.”

 

Gansey is the only one without a reaction, which is a reaction in itself, but Adam doesn’t have the time to dissect all of it yet, instead he listens as Gansey talks, voice just as careful. “We should talk, I think.” He’s looking at Adam with gentle eyes, and it should probably be reassuring or kind. It’s not. It’s too much like pity inside them for that, and Adam feels all of his hackles rising, needs all his focus on not barking something rude. “Gather everyone before lunch, talk about everything we know. You must have a lot of questions?”

 

Adam nods, not quite trusting himself to speak.

 

Gansey smiles like the sun after a soft drizzle. 

 

Well, he  _ does  _ have a lot of questions.

 

*

 

Adam hesitates in front of the hotel door, hand raised to knock. Blue had said last night this was Ronan’s room, and they had all camped out here while waiting for them to return with Adam, but that doesn’t mean he would want Adam knocking on his door now.

 

He knocks anyway.

 

“It’s open.” The voice drifts, quiet and hoarse, and Adam hesitates again. That wasn’t an invitation, even if it wasn’t a rejection either.

 

He steps inside anyway.

 

Ronan is sitting on the floor in the space between the bed and the wall, back against the mattress and legs stretched out in front of him. He has a cigarette between his lips, head tilted back and smoke slowly dissolving in the air around his face. The balcony door is open wide, sunlight streaming in, but the smell of smoke hits Adam all the same.

 

“Those things will kill you, you know.”

 

“Right,” Ronan snorts, derisively and with no humor, “worst things have tried before.”

 

_ I wouldn’t know,  _ almost escapes his lips, but he bites back in time. Adam hovers in the doorway, unsure where he is allowed to go. Ronan takes a long drag, the tips of his cigarette lighting up red, and blows the smoke up towards the sky. It’s almost friendly, Adam thinks, considering he could have aimed for Adam’s face if he wanted to be obnoxious.

 

“You missed breakfast,” Adam settles for saying, cringing when it comes out more like an accusation, “you said they would break down doors if we missed it.”

 

There’s an empty plate on the bedside table, and crumbles all over the bed, so Adam figures he wasn’t late, he had been  _ early.  _

 

He wonders when did Ronan wake up, to have eaten breakfast already.

 

He studies his face, the shadows under his eyes, the hollow of his collarbone peeking from his tank, the curve of his neck, then he stops looking altogether.

 

He wonders if he slept at all.

 

“No,” a flicker of ashes hits the floor, carelessly ignoring any potential fire hazards, “I said they would break  _ your  _ door if  _ you  _ were late.” A pause, another drag. “Never said I’d be there.”

 

“I figured it was implied,” Adam says mildly. There’s a bottle of expensive vodka lying on the balcony, but he knows enough bottles to know it’s still full, unopened. Chainsaw lands on the railing, ruffling her feathers.

 

“I figured,” Ronan is glancing at him at the corner of his eyes, “you’d still be downstairs.”

 

“They were being loud, thought I’d come find you.”

 

“Why.”

 

It’s not a question, it’s not a statement. It’s just a word falling out of his lips and curling in the air along the pale smoke. The cigarette dangles from his fingers now, and his gaze is fixed on the wall. He hasn’t looked at Adam since he walked in.

 

The truth is, Adam doesn’t have an answer either. All he knows is that he couldn’t stand the look on his  _ friends’  _ eyes anymore, he would go insane if anyone asked him again  _ do you remember–  _

 

So he excused himself, and left. And his feet brought him here, and now here Adam is.

 

“I don’t know,” he says carefully, choosing his words, afraid the wrong ones might spook him. He offers, “muscle memory?” 

 

He means it as a joke, but it lands flat, and Ronan stiffens, tension coiling on his limbs and the cigarette is crushed between his fingers. It wasn’t the right thing to say, but he isn’t kicking Adam out yet, so maybe, neither was it wrong. 

 

Adam watches as Ronan looks at the ruined cigarette fallen at his feet, glaring at it in disgust before producing a pack from somewhere under the bed and fishing out a new one. The lighter flickers to life, smoke fills the room again.

 

“Didn’t know you smoked.” He tries again when it becomes clear Ronan isn’t going to say anything to that.

 

“Didn’t know you knew shit about me now.”

 

Annoyance flares inside of Adam, piercing through the haze that seems to be surrounding everything on his brain lately. It’s sharp and hot and fierce, and it feels too familiar, too splattered with fondness. It makes him angrier. “Fuck you,” Adam crosses his arms over his chest because it’s better than let them turn into white-knuckled fists– it would be too much like giving in, like letting him win. “Why are you trying to pick a fight?”

 

“I don’t know,” Ronan finally turns his head, staring him down with painfully blank eyes and a scowl on his lips, “why are you fucking here?”

 

“For fuck’s sake–  _ I don’t know,”  _ Adam stalks across the room, stopping in front of him, his boots almost touching Ronan’s tights. Grey ashes fall on them. “Does it even matter?”

 

Ronan looks at Adam, and he feels it as a searing heat on his skin, summer blooming on his ribcage and growing and growing and growing– “A little,” Ronan says in the end, blowing smoke on Adam’s face. It should aggravate him further– it does, for a brief second– except Ronan’s lips twitch upwards in a barely suppressed smile, and it all melts away. 

 

“You’re impossible,” Adam nudges his tight, dislodging the pile of ashes on his left boot, “come on, Gansey says to meet them in his room.”

 

With a sigh, he stubs his cigarette on the floor, leaving it there with the first, and lets out a surprisingly compound curse when he fails to stand up on his own. He must have been sitting there for some time now, Adam guesses. Before he could talk himself out of it, he offers him a hand.

 

Ronan looks at it, then up at Adam, then back at it. There’s a flash of an unnamed emotion on his eyes– gone too quick for him to catch. Then, he accepts it.

 

Something happens, not a memory but– 

 

The feeling of skin against skin, Ronan’s wristbands rough against his own wrist, a heartbeat drumming along his own, aware of every point of contact–

 

Adam pulls him up. Ronan is looking at him like a deer caught in the headlights of a fast-approaching car. They linger, not quite letting go, not quite holding on.  _ Maybe– _

 

A high-pitched ringing startles them both, tearing apart in the second it takes for Adam to realize the noises are coming from Ronan’s phone, ringing from somewhere on the balcony. He blinks, trying to shake off the odd feeling that settles on his bones.

 

“Aren’t you going to get that?”Adam asks, finding the sound of his own voice strange, too loud. 

 

“Fuck no,” Ronan digs around the blankets, rescues a wallet from under them, “that’s Gansey. We should go before he decides to come looking.”

 

Adam kind of wants to ask what’s so bad about that, it’s not like they were doing anything, after all. But whatever passed between them, it left an aftertaste. So yeah, they should probably go.

 

*

 

_ “Adam Parrish,” Gansey says, “what do you know about Welsh kings?” _

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks again for reading! sorry for the more or less filler chapter, y'all are lovely!


	3. per aspera ad astra

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 300 Fox Way, the new Cabeswater, explanations, and Adam remembers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey there! I hope y'all like it!

The flight to Henrietta is long and tiring, and it makes Adam antsy, restless, skittish. 

 

Their talk that morning hadn’t helped, either. The words keep playing on repeat on his head, doing loops on his mind, over and over and over. They are all too big, too much, too impossible to be true, and yet–  _ and yet. _

 

Magic and prophecies and demons?

 

_ Magician,  _ the trees had called him on his dreams; Gansey had repeated that word today, Blue nodding fervently at his side.

 

But, how can it be?

 

_ Magician. _

 

Henry didn’t have much to add, seeming content to hang back and offer a comment, a shift of perspective here and there, filling in gaps and stirring Gansey back on topic.

 

Adam looks down at his hands, at the lines and scars and calluses. Did he really sacrifice them to a magical forest?

 

He tries to imagine it, the desperation and longing and helplessness that might have driven him there. 

 

_ Cabeswater. _

 

He doesn’t dare say it out loud, not with Henry sleeping lightly on the seat beside him and Ronan drumming a restless rhythm on the window behind him. Still, he silently repeats it over and over and over, feeling the weight on his tongue and the taste of grass on his mouth.

 

Half of him wants to run, wants to land and turn on his heel, catch the next flight back to New Haven, forget everything he’s heard and seen. Half of him burns with the need to remember, to feel the pulse of the ley line falling in tandem with his heartbeat, to feel  _ more  _ than flesh and blood and bones.

 

Blue had taken his hand and talked about her house full of psychics, about whimsical Persephone and her lessons, about scrying and about the tarot deck he must have left behind somewhere in Henrietta.

 

He doesn’t remember any of those things, couldn’t even tell the names of the cards on a deck if she asked him now but he wishes he could remember Persephone enough to mourn her death.

 

Ronan had barely said a word. He had followed Adam inside, leaned against the wall with Chainsaw stoically perched on his shoulder, and remained motionless, only offering a comment when the others came up empty or Gansey prompted him directly. Still, there had been a change, something subtle shifting under his gaze, as he talked about the Barns and waking up sleeping animals under the summer heat.

 

Right, there’s that, too.

 

Adam and Ronan had been working on some project together.  _ Greywaren,  _ Blue had called him. Because Ronan can take things out of his dreams. Things like Chainsaw. Things like his brother. Things like a packet of evidence to frame a murderer for a string of murders.

 

_ God,  _ he wishes he had more trouble believing it.

 

As it is, Adam finds all these words resonate on his bones and he knows them to be true like nothing else on his life. He holds it on the same light as every other fundamental truth of the universe.  _ Water boils at 100ºC, the Earth is round, there is magic running through the veins of each of his friends. _

 

The flight to Henrietta is long and tiring, but the sky is a clear blue, and as Adam looks around the five of them, he knows.

 

_ It’s starting again. _

 

*

 

“This should work better with your deck,” Maura says, “it’s tied to you.”

 

Adam blinks. He has no idea where he might have lost his tarot cards, he didn’t know they existed until this morning. Orla disappears upstairs for a minute, before coming back down, handing Blue’s mom a battered deck.

 

“It was in Persephone’s room,” Calla explains, taking pity on his permanent state of confusion. Then, she smirks slyly, “but we’re going to need the full deck, and there’s a card missing. Snake?”

 

She’s talking to Ronan, Adam realizes. Calla has turned her smirk to him, watching gleefully as Ronan scowls deeper than Adam has ever seen him, and fishes his wallet out of his jeans. The confusion grows. Ronan flips through dollar bills and documents, pauses. His eyes glance up, fleetingly focusing on Adam before he pulls out a card.

 

Calla smirks wider.

 

_ The Magician. _

 

Maura takes it, sliding it with the rest, and handing them to Adam. “Shuffle,” she orders. And Adam obeys, even as his eyes follow Ronan as he storms out of the reading room, slams the front door behind him. Adam wants to ask him why he has Adam’s card, why he carries it on his wallet, why–  _ out of sight, out of mind,  _ he tells himself, and shuffles.

 

He hands it back.

 

Maura spreads them on the small table, faces down. Gansey and Henry are still sitting quietly on the back. Blue is at her mother’s side, giving Adam an encouraging smile.  _ Who am I _ , he asks,  _ how do I remember?  _

 

_ The Magician.  _

 

_ Six of Cups.  _

 

_ The Hierophant. _

 

“What does it mean?”

 

“The Magician,” Blue smiles a very Blue smile. When she speaks, it’s a very Blue speech, “is you. That’s your card, Adam. The cards remember you, even if you don’t remember them.”

 

“The Six of Cups,” Calla takes over, tracing the outline of the card with a perfectly manicured nail, “is usually about reunions,  _ memories.  _ I hear you are missing those?” She waves off his frown, “you are focusing too much on the past, you might get those lost years back, but have you thought about the now? Have you worried about what is happening now? The past is the past, and there is nothing to change there.”

 

He hasn’t. Adam has spent all this time worrying about getting his memories back, he hasn’t stopped to wonder why  _ now _ ? Why force them to remember now? He thinks of the ravens falling dead on the sidewalk and the black tendrils trying to break through the glass, reaching, reaching,  _ reaching. _

 

“It doesn’t mean you’ve lost your memories forever,” Maura says gently, “don’t lose hope just yet, this is just a warning. Look for your past all you want, but don’t lose sight of your future.” She regards the last card with fond exasperation, “now, the Hierophant. Spirituality and religion and the Divine, does that remind you of something?”

 

_ “Cabeswater,”  _ he breathes.

 

“Yes, I take it you haven’t visited it yet? You all should. You’ll have better chances of finding your answers there. Reunite with your forest, will you? It’s calling for you.”

 

Adam looks at the cards, looks at the three women.  _ Three women, three cards, three years. _ Did he really use to be a part of this?  Did he look at this cards and see hidden meanings behind their drawings and symbols and names?

 

_ Yes,  _ yes, he did.

 

He knows this in his soul.

 

As he regards the rest of the deck, spread out in front of him, Adam feels drawn towards another one of the cards. It’s just as bland, just as battered, just as magical, as the others, but it catches his eyes and he can’t help drawing it out and turning it upwards.

 

_ The Knight of Cups. _

 

“What does this one mean?”

 

Maura looks at Blue. Calla smirks knowingly, pityingly, irritatingly. Finally, Blue says, “well,” she pauses, “you used to say–”

 

The world tilts– 

 

*

 

( Adam is sitting on the floor of Monmouth Manufacturing, shuffling his tarot cards absent-minded, more motion than thought. Blue is on the couch, her legs dangling from the arm, her focus narrowed down on trying to roll her pink switchblade around her fingers. 

 

The sounds of Gansey tinkering in the kitchen drift softly, few and far in between, not enough yet to warrant any response from them. He might be hopeless, but his cooking hasn’t risen to disaster status today. Maybe if they give him another half hour, maybe then.

 

“Where’s Ronan?” Blue asks, eyes still tracking pink. The question is open for anyone to answer, but they all know it’s directed to Adam.

 

“At the Barns,” he shrugs, closing his eyes, “he doesn’t like leaving Opal alone for too long.”

 

“Right,” she says, “there’s that now, too.”

 

“She’s a good kid, hooves and all,” Adam grins, thinking of the past few days he spent listening to rabbit-quick latin, “reliable to trash talk Ronan in any language.”

 

Blue’s attention shift from the switchblade, disappearing with it in a flick of her wrist– she’s getting scarily good with that thing– to Adam. She grins sharply. “And there’s  _ that  _ now, too.”

 

Adam doesn’t blush, he doesn’t think, but it’s a near thing. He looks down at the cards, feeling the weight of the full deck on his palm, grounding him. But the moment she had mentioned Ronan’s name, Adam’s mind had wandered and wandered and wandered, and his heart had skipped a beat in a disgustingly cliched kind of way, a gravity pull he’s not even trying to resist. “Yeah,” Adam feels a smile pulling at his lips, knows it’s coming off too soft and too genuine. “There’s that.”

 

“You really like him,” Blue comments, more to herself than anything. As if that had ever been a question. “Murder Squash Song and all?”

 

He laughs, thinks of the mixtape sitting on the Hondayota. Maybe they had always been a bit cliched. “It grows on you.”

 

She snorts, and the switchblade is back on her hands. Adam keeps shuffling his deck, more motion than thoughts. Then, as it has been doing for months, his mind wanders back to Ronan.

 

Adam stops shuffling, pulls up a card. He feels his pulse picking up speed in the best possible way, smiles. “Hey, Blue?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Ronan’s here.”

 

She makes a noise of disbelief. “He texted you?”

 

“No,” he waits until she looks down at him, then shows her the card.  _ Knight of Cups.  _ She looks at it, making no move to touch it, then nods, agreeing with him. 

 

“You are so ridiculously smitten, Adam Parrish,” tires screech to a halt downstairs, electronic music blasting loud enough to almost drown the sound of a door being slammed shut. Heavy footsteps are thundering up the stairs, Chainsaw flies through the window, landing on Adam’s shoulders. “But you know what? So is he.” )

 

*

 

–and Adam stumbles, drowning on the snapshot of a memory pressing, burning, carving at the back of his eyelids. 

 

Blue is still talking, “ –it was Ronan’s card.”

 

That half of a second between one word and another had stretched into infinity for Adam, showing him a glimpse of a life he’s so desperately missing but has no idea how to ask for. He wants to ask Blue what that had meant, what she had meant, in the memory, in reality.

 

Did that mean what he wants it to mean?

 

Adam can imagine her firing back,  _ what do you want it to mean, Adam?  _ He has an answer for that he barely understands.  _ Everything,  _ he imagines he’d say.

 

*

 

Adam doesn’t know how he got outside. He can’t quite remember anything after the reading. He had been inside. A blink. He’s outside. It terrifies him. The thought of losing any more time makes his hands shake and his throat to constrict.

 

Still, he looks up, finds Ronan smoking in the garden, and even if his skin is crawling with fear and raw from the memory, it’s a distraction he welcomes.

 

“Thanks,” Adam says, sidling up to him. They stare together at the trees. On the fence, Chainsaw caws in greeting. “For holding on to that for me.”

 

Ronan waves him off with a flicker of his cigarette, the only sign he even heard Adam at all. Back at the hotel, when they had been going over the whole Glendower quest crash course, Ronan had made it out to be that he and Adam had barely been friends. Adam wants to call him a liar now. Instead, he asks, “why did you?”

 

Silence as Ronan exhales, smoke rising above their heads. He gives Adam a tired look as if Adam were being exceptionally slow and it was exhausting. 

 

Which,  _ unfair,  _ Adam takes offense to that. “Look, your disinterested act is very tiring and doesn’t hold well when you do things like that.” Adam huffs, annoyed, and rolls his eyes, already turning to go back inside.  _ Fine,  _ if Ronan wants to keep sulking, then he can do it alone.

 

A hand curls around his wrist. Adam stops breathing, heart clambering up to his throat. The answer comes through gritted teeth, quiet and pained. “I missed you.”

 

Adam sneaks a look at Ronan, finds him looking back. It doesn’t feel like a game, but it feels like playing russian roulette all the same, and he wonders for how long he will keep firing off blanks. Breathing in, he steels himself, meets the stare head-on. “I don’t remember half of my time here,” that’s an understatement and they both know it.  _ Ready, aim, fire _ . “But I think I still missed you, too.”

 

The cigarette has been discarded some time ago, but Ronan still smells like cigarette smoke, and trees, and earth, and rain, and Adam isn’t sure if his lungs would ever work again, if his heart will stop drumming erratically on his chest. The hand on his wrist shifts, a thumb pressing lightly on his pulse point. Adam wants to point out you don’t measure someone’s heartbeat with your thumb, but finds he can’t speak at all. 

 

_“Adam,”_ Ronan says, quiet and heavy and belonging in a church choir. This is it, Adam thinks, this is the loaded chamber. He could turn his own hand, intertwine their fingers; they would fit perfectly, he knows. The silence stretches, stretches, stretches– 

 

A shriek comes from inside the house, followed by a loud cackling, startling them apart.  _ Again.  _ Adam closes his eyes, going through every swear word on his vocabulary. When he opens them again, Ronan is a few feet away, and his face twitches like he wants to laugh.

 

The laughter comes closer, the backdoor is thrown open. A tall woman steps outside, her dark hair wild and untidy, her grey eyes widening in delight as she catches them in the garden. “Oh, my! I cannot believe my eyes!” She says, “it starts, it starts again!”

 

Ronan is back at scowling, rolling his eyes. “No,” he points at her, “we’re not dealing with your brand of crazy shit today.”

 

“Why so mean? Look, look, little dreamer,” she is playing with something on her hands. A rubber band, that she stretches between one finger and the other before letting it snap back in place. “Your favorite dream has returned to you!” She claps her hands, gleefully, and Adam can’t tell if she’s genuinely happy or mocking them mercilessly.

 

A name clicks in place and it sounds like a gun going off. “This is Gwenllian, right?” He asks Ronan, “the one that was sleeping?”

 

“You,” she stretches the band, “are still my least favorite. So careless, misplacing things! Cards and leaves, words and memories!”

 

Something cold trickles down his spine, skittering at the edge of his temper, slicing through the thrilling anticipation he had been riding. “ _ Excuse me.” _

 

“Come on, Parrish,” Ronan is at his side again, tugging lightly at his sleeve to get him to move, “don’t listen to her, she’s crazy.”

 

Gwenllian laughs, the rubber band snaps, she stretches it again between her two hands. “Oh, my knightling! Do keep your little dream on a leash,” she sings, then turns to Adam, “your master is calling, don’t you hear? It’s time, it’s time, it’s time! What will you sacrifice this time, I wonder, Sir-forgets-a-lot?”

 

Ronan is snarling, yelling something back, but Adam is stilled by the words. Just like three years ago, he figures. A quest, a demon, and three years of living life as an ivy league college student and Gwenllian looks at Adam and sees the trailer trash she’s always seen.

 

From what he’s been told, and from what he’s felt since landing in this dust of a town, Cabeswater is a vine curling around his soul and tugging at his strings, but even so, Henrietta has its claws on Adam. It chokes on his throat, warping his words in a dripping accent he can’t shake for good, it’s on the multitude of freckles dusting his skin, it’s on the roughness of his hands, it’s on the ugly scars carved on bruised flesh.

 

Sometimes, he thinks leaving it behind might bleed him dry.

 

“What is going on here?” Blue appears on the doorway, hands on her hips, the fury of the righteous on her eyes. They land on the laughing witch, and she sneers with distaste, “what did she do?”

 

“Sargent,” Ronan sneers back, with all the dangerous calm of a sea hiding its maelstrom underneath. “Get her the  _ fuck  _ out of my sight, before I take her back to that fucking cave myself and burn it to the ground.”

 

But Gwenllian isn’t paying attention to them anymore, she has her wild eyes turned to Blue. “Mirror, mirror on the wall,” she sing-songs, “tell me, this time, whose blood will fall?”

 

Blue looks up to the ceiling as if praying for patience. Then, she marches outside, grabs Gwenllian by the arm and proceeds to drag her inside the house. “I swear to god–  _ Mom _ ! Who let the crazy person watch Disney movies?  _ Seriously? _ ”

 

Before the door can slam closed, though, Gwenllian twists on Blue’s grip, calling back with a wavering finger in Adam’s direction. “Held on too tight, didn’t you?” The rubber band on her hands stretches, stretches, stretches– and snaps, shooting off. “Didn’t you know? Did you think you could dig your claws without blood spilling on the floor?”

 

Her eyes are gleefully wild and terribly sad. Adam wonders if Gwenllian really is crazy, or if she just wishes so. Blue tugs her in forcefully, slams the door hard enough for the hinges to screech. 

 

And then, there were two again.

 

“I can fight my own battles, you know,” Adam says, not moving. There is blood in the water, and aren’t layers supposed to be sharks? 

 

There’s blood in the water and Adam is raw with too many emotions, too many questions,  _ too many _ . He’s restless, itching, temper fraying. He is a ticking time bomb, and Ronan is right in the middle of the blast zone. “You think I don’t fucking know that?” Ronan kicks a loose rock. It hits a tree nearby. “Motherfucking crazy lady gets on my nerves every fucking time. Don’t know why I bother. Should’ve left her on that goddamn cave when we had the chance.”

 

The clock ticks, ticks, ticks. Ronan takes a step closer, either unaware of the red danger warning signs or ignoring them. Adam breathes in the smell of grass, and rain, and cigarette smoke. Another minute. A deep breath. The fuse fizzles out. “You can’t set rocks on fire,” he offers.

 

“Fucking watch me,” Ronan fixes a scowl on his face, his eyes don’t.

 

Adam finally turns to him, thinks it over, says, “okay.”

 

*

 

“There’s just one problem,” Ronan tells them once they all spilled from the BMW and Chainsaw shot up to the sky. The tree line lurks in front of them, the old trail to Cabeswater gone along the old Cabeswater without a trace. To Adam, it sounds like more than just one problem. “Right now, there’s just one problem.”

 

Gansey sighs, pinches the bridge of his nose. “What did you do?”

 

Ronan stops, tilts his head, decides on a glare. “I resent you jumping to conclusions. Who said I did anything?”

 

“Have you met yourself?” Blue asks, flatly, already bored with their antics.

 

“Yes, actually,” Ronan tells her on the same flat tone, “on a dream.”

 

“We’re getting off topic,” Adam cuts in because Blue’s got a look on her eyes that says she might find arguing on the side of the road a more entertaining option. “What’s the problem?”

 

“Cabeswater isn’t letting me in.”

 

A roar of unhelpful comments rise. Everyone speaks at the same time, even Henry, who had been rendered silent in awed contemplation as they neared the forest. They keep forgetting he hadn’t been there for the beginning, where everything was still soft and shiny and wonder-inspiring. 

 

“Holy hell,” Ronan speaks over the noise, “will you let me explain? Good. This new Cabeswater, it’s been out here for a few weeks. It first appeared on my dreams a little after you all fucked off for  _ college _ .” He says it like battery acid, like it’s the real swear word on the phrase. All things considered, for him, maybe it is. “I can visit it just fine sleeping, but every time I try coming out here, it turns me around.” He throws an irritated look behind his shoulder, huffs, “I enter the forest, get less than half a mile in and I’m back where I fucking started.”

 

“That’s,” Adam pauses abruptly, cutting himself off. What does he know about anything? He’s the amnesiac. He struggles to find better words to finish that sentence, decides to restart. “Do you have any idea why?”

 

“You’re the Greywaren,” Gansey says, sounding half interested and half guilty about being interested, “why would it shut  _ you  _ out?”

 

“From what I remember,” Henry frowns. It looks awfully out of place on his face. “You all were always out communing with the trees. Or something,” he adds, “what changed?”

 

“Maybe it will help,” Blue suggests, “my being here?” Then, smirking, “do you need me to hold your hand?”

 

Ronan snarls something back, probably some sort of insult on her height, and while nothing about their group is quiet, their voices are beginning to fade out, fizzing into a white noise of sorts. It makes everything else louder. 

 

Suddenly, it’s just Adam, the smell of grass after a thunderstorm, the rustling of leaves, and the sun warming his skin. 

 

_ Grata domum.  _

 

Welcome home.

 

Adam smiles. The world snaps gently into place. “It’ll let us in, now.” He tells them.

 

“What?” Gansey turns wide eyes to him, “how do you know?”

 

Adam shrugs, “I just do.”

 

Henry shifts his weight from one foot to another, pushing his sunglasses up his hair, not bothering to pretend he understands the situation. These are impossible things he is only now being a part of. Blue and Gansey exchange a look.

 

“Good enough for me,” Ronan says, looking up at the sky, then shrugging and making his way to the forest. “Come on, hurry the fuck up, we’re wasting daylight.”

 

_ “We’re wasting daylight,”  _ Blue parrots back, mockingly, but she starts walking, and so do Gansey and Henry, “what are you now, a park ranger?”

 

Ronan’s voice echoes from the trees, too far for them to make out the words, their meaning clear in the lilt of his tone. They all scramble to follow, out of the afternoon sun and into the encompassing darkness of the trees.

 

_ Grata domum,  _ indeed.

 

*

 

They find a hidden trail around the place Cabeswater used to always turn Ronan around. It’s a barely there thing, but once they spot it, there’s no losing it again. It’s as obvious as any highway or interstate.

 

As they follow it, the air is pleasantly cool, a faint wind breezing by every few minutes, and Adam could swear the forest floor blooms under their feet. Ronan walks ahead, whispering greetings to the trees, and the gentle murmur of a creek somewhere far ahead sounds like an answering prayer.

 

The trail leads them to it, a shallow current of water running impossibly upstream, a clearing around it. Chainsaw takes flight from Ronan’s shoulder, shooting up towards the sky and circling the place, a few other ravens joining her eventually. 

 

“This is it,” Blue says, looking around with disbelieving eyes, “it’s really back?”

 

“Breathtaking,” Henry’s fingers tremble as he reaches to touch a flower hanging from one of the trees. “ _ Wonderful _ things.” He says it like he says everything else, meaning each word fully, recklessly.  _ Wonderful,  _ he said.  _ Full of wonders,  _ he meant.

 

Adam leaves them marveling at the discovery, exploring its nooks and turns, and crouches by the creek. The water is cold, and when he dips one hand in, a tiny blue fish swims around it, nudging his thumb once, then swimming away. When the sun catches its scales, all Adam sees is a flash of red.  _ Wonderful,  _ he, too, thinks.

 

But Adam isn’t here to sit around and gawk. He has questions, and he needs answers. 

 

Standing up, he searches for Ronan, finds him sitting on the grass a few feet away. “Can you translate for me?”

 

He gets a smug smirk in return. “Forgot your Latin?”

 

Adam sighs, plopping down in the grass beside him. “Along with some other things, yes, and I’d like to have them back.”

 

Ronan falls silent for a minute that lasts longer than it should. He chews on leather strips. “What do you want to say?”

 

“Ask it,” Adam needs to clear his throat, “ask it why?”

 

A nod and Ronan asks. Nothing happens at first, the new Cabeswater– the one not tied by blood or sacrifices, the one with no claim to Adam’s hands or eyes or memories– stays quiet and still. At first, it thinks over the question, rolls it under the bark, drowns it under water.

 

Then,  _ et daemonium.  _ “The demon,” Ronan translates. The trees whisper something else, too quick for Adam to catch. “It was afraid of the demon.”

 

“But we killed it,” Gansey says, sitting down in front of them, Blue and Henry at each side. “Right?”

 

More latin fills the air. “We did,” Ronan frowns, “but it’s more complicated than that.” He shifts, uneasy, and Adam remembers Blue retelling how the demon tried to unmake Ronan. The urge to do something rises in Adam, and he valiantly goes to squash it down, finds that he can’t think of good reason to. Instead, he rests a shaking hand on Ronan’s knee, squeezes it once. Ronan looks up, surprise coloring his eyes, and his lips curl up in another almost-smile. 

 

“We killed it, sure,” he continues, “but we killed it here. We killed it from this world, its physical manifestation, you know?”

 

Gansey made a noise that said  _ no, I don’t. _

 

But Adam does. They are sitting on top of the explanation. “Cabeswater had been gone, too,” Adam points out, “does it feel any less real now to you?”

 

“But Cabeswater isn’t the same as the demon,” Blue frowns, picking at a loose thread on her jeans, “it can’t come back, too, can it?”

 

“Cabeswater could only come back because it had a doorway on my dreams,” Ronan says, “and the ley line to back it up.”

 

Henry nods as if understanding where this is going. “Cabeswater doesn’t have private ownership of the ley line’s energy, though.”

 

“No,” Adam agrees, “no, it doesn’t.”

 

The trees whisper again, an ivy growing from the ground and curling around Adam’s ankle. He eyes it suspiciously; as far as apologies go, this one is lacking. Beside him, Ronan speaks again, “they say they needed to close the door,” a frown, “no, the demon was too powerful. The door couldn’t exist at all.”

 

“Every lock has a key,” Blue muses. “Any closed door can be opened.”

 

“By both sides,” Gansey finishes, voice quietening into wariness. “It was afraid someone might open it from ours, wasn’t it?”

 

“ _ Damnatio memoriae,”  _ Adam whispers, closing his eyes. There’s a jolt of undiluted fear, the bone drenching kind of panic of a cornered animal, injured and wild and ready for a well of possibility. It’s gone by the time he opens them again. “Cabeswater needed to erase our memories of the demon to erase the door. As long as we remembered, there would be a way in.”

 

Ronan snorts, and it sounds like a snarl, it sounds bitter and hollow. Adam squeezes his knee again. It’s almost over now, he can feel his memories calling just shy of his fingertips, can see the faded out after images behind his eyelids. “That’s the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.”

 

Gansey looks thoughtful when he speaks. “The Roman Empire used to do it,” he says, “damnatio memoriae. Erasing someone completely from history. But we can’t know if they were ever really successful,” is added, as an afterthought, “there would be no records if they were.”

 

“But we would never bring the demon back,” Henry shakes his head, “after everything, we would never bring it back.” What he says:  _ everything.  _ What he means:  _ Gansey. _

 

Latin, skittish and lightning quick. It reminds Adam of Opal. Ronan translates on, “it couldn’t risk it,” he sighs, “demons are… they’re dark magic?” A frown, then a scoff, “something about not fucking around with that kind of magic?”

 

“Knowledge.” Blue nods, “knowledge is power, and we all knew  _ it. _ We all knew its  _ name. _ ” She shivers, huddling closer to Gansey. “That’s dangerous.”

 

“But we don’t know its name, not really. We’ve spent that year calling it,” Gansey says, then stops himself. “ _ You know.” _

 

“Yeah, but we basically gave it that name. It’s enough, especially here. Names have power,” Adam drawls, his accent surfacing unwanted. “If someone else learned it, if we let it slip for the wrong person…”

 

“What changed?” Henry asks suddenly, “I mean, it had been an issue then, it’s still an issue now. So why are we remembering  _ now?” _

 

Adam thinks of Calla’s warnings and Gwenllian’s song. “I think someone is trying to summon the demon.” He thinks of the black seeping into his dream. “And I think it’s very close to succeeding. Close enough that Cabeswater needed us. We owe it, after all.”

 

And even if they didn’t, setting that demon loose, that’s not something any of them could ignore. They all remember too much of that year to skip the sense of accountability and the heavy guilt underneath. 

 

They are getting sidetracked here. Adam shakes Ronan, silently calling his attention. “Ask it where are my memories.” 

 

“What am I, your personal google translator?” Ronan says scowling, but Adam can tell it’s just to be contrary. After a beat, he asks.

 

A long string of words follows, whispered by a light breeze, not bothering to slow down for the rest of them. Ronan gives Adam a sidelong glance before focusing on the last of the phrase. Finally, the forest quietens and he speaks in their place. “Short answer is: they know jack shit about it.”

 

Adam refuses to despair. “And the long answer?”

 

“They say it went haywire with you,” he grimaces, hands curling into fists on his lap. Again, Adam finds no reason to stop himself, so he moves his hand to ease Ronan’s open. Their fingers don’t entwine, but neither pulls away. Ronan takes a deep, shaky breath, “something happened when Cabeswater was pulling the memories away. The others went easy enough, and it should’ve been easier because you are the Magician and shit, so they weren’t prepared. You fought back.”

 

There’s a tinge of pride on his voice, Adam can recognize, but Adam also kinda wants to punch himself. Because Gwenllian’s words are coming back to him, and so is Noah’s question. _Held on too tight, didn’t you?_ He can hear Gwenllian cackling. Adam closes his eyes, regret settling deep on his bones; by the end of all this, it might be more vitriol than marrow.

 

“It’s my fault,” he confesses because it  _ is  _ his fault in the way that there are consequences in life, whether you’re aware or not. “that’s it, isn’t it? I held on too tight and it snapped. Both of us lost grip of them. That’s why I’m the only one who hasn’t remembered yet. The more I fought, the farther they ended up.”

 

“Oh, Adam,” Blue moves to pat his hand, but something in her voice makes him recoil. Too much like pity, too much like condescension. He can’t deal with her gentle understanding, not right now, not when it makes his skin crawl.

 

He needs a solution, something to work with. “Is there–” he falters, clearing his throat of the thorns embedding themselves there. “Is there a way to get them back?”

 

Ronan isn’t looking at Adam, rather he stares at a blooming patch of white lilies like they personally insulted them. “Cabeswater says they are lost in the middle, out of its reach. You have to go try and get them yourself.” 

 

_ Yes,  _ he thinks relieved, swallowing down bloody petals,  _ this I can do. _

 

“Do you have your lighter with you?” Adam asks, even if it’s a stupid question. Ronan nods, fishing it out of the pocket of his jeans. If he does it one-handed, the other still curled around Adam’s, no one comments. Adam regards the black lighter, hears the liquid sloshing inside it. “Will it hold?”  _ Is it a dream thing,  _ he means.

 

“Yes,” Ronan answers, meaning  _ yes, to both,  _ and hands it over.

 

“You are the smartest person I know,” Blue huffs, “but you’re the stupidest, too. Do you even remember how to scry? You’ll get lost.”

 

“Yes,” Adam lies. Blue glares. “No– but! I don’t have to! All I need is to get there. When I have my memories back, I’ll know what to do.”

 

“Isn’t this how Persephone died?” Henry asks dubiously, probably remembering their talk back at the hotel.

 

“That’s exactly how she died, and how  _ he  _ got that scar on his hand,” Gansey drums his fingers on his thigh, studying the grass in front of him. He’s not wearing his glasses, but there’s still a permanent scholar look about him that never fails to put them all more at ease. “Are you sure it’ll be safe?”

 

“Safe as life,” Adam feels a smile twisting on his face. He can’t imagine it looks very happy, or reassuring. “But hey, that was more of an announcement, you know?”

 

His legs are beginning to cramp, so Adam stretches out, crossing them on the ankles. The thin vine curling there pokes his skin with a thorn, displeased, but retreats back to the ground without needing to be prompted. Ronan nudges his tight with a booted foot, telling him he saw the interaction and the glint of mischief on his eyes tell him he was amused.

 

“If you die,” he says flatly, “I’ll find a way to bring you back to kill you myself.”

 

Adam shrugs, “fair enough.”

 

He flickers the lighter into life and loses himself in the open flame.

 

*

 

There’s the detachment that comes with scrying, and there’s Cabeswater, staying just shy of the edge of his vision– a silent tugging at his attention.

 

But Adam isn’t here for it now. Cabeswater can wait.

 

So he goes further away– outwards, inwards; it doesn’t make much of a difference.

 

He hears the faint sound of laughing, the smell of pizza, warm body beside him in the booth, Adam stretches a hand and then– he’s being pulled into a memory.

 

_ Pizza nights at Nino’s– _

 

_ Spending the afternoon at Monmouth, Gansey talking about Glendower, Ronan and Noah doing donuts on the parking lot– _

 

_ Latin class, early mornings in St. Agnes, a courtroom– _

 

_ Blue surrounded by a swarm of small dogs, flowers, a sacrifice– _

 

_ Lessons with Persephone, working on the ley line, scrying on a church staring at a flickering candle–  _

 

_ Cabeswater itself, the Barns, D.C.–  _

 

_ Ronan with a newborn Chainsaw on his hands, Henry Cheng talking in the halls of Aglionby, driving to the Barns with Ronan, the way he looks alive, alive, alive, and impossibly beautiful out there– _

 

_ Unguibus et rostro– _

 

Adam is drowning on his memories– too much, too fast– he can’t breathe, can’t speak, can’t see, until– everything snaps into place. 

 

The ground is shifting under his feet worse than an earthquake but in the best possible way. It’s all sliding back where it belongs.

 

In the nothingness of the limbo, with Cabeswater lurking on the back of his mind, Adam  _ remembers. _

 

Relief and contentment fill every gap on his soul, warm and golden; here, he can see it surrounding him, swirling around his hands. It’s light made into matter, it’s his heart, beating too fast, it’s Adam, finally knowing himself.

 

But as he smiles, the golden begins turning into black impossibly quick, and dread creeps with cold, cold tendrils, wrapping itself over Adam’s legs, and climbing up, up up.

 

He needs to go back, and he needs to do it now. Fear swallows his words. He’s wandered too far. He can’t feel his body. Can’t feel the grass. Can’t hear his friends. Can’t find the way back–

 

The black is nearly reaching his torso. 

 

Adam needs to go back. The black is reaching. Is this what happened to Persephone?  _ Reaching. Reaching. Reaching. _

 

His hands shake. There’s nothing to grasp, nothing to hold on to. Adam tries to pry the goo from his skin. Instead, it latches onto his fingers like spiderwebs. He hears a faint shrieking– spidery insect legs skittering past.

 

Distantly, a voice. 

 

_ Adam Parrish, come back. _

 

And then– 

 

*

 

Adam slams back into his body violently, a car crash in slow motion and a bullet exploding out of the barrel of a gun. 

 

His eyes are his own again, and he catches a glimpse of a concerned face before it all goes black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so, I have a big bad presentation to finish making, so, let's keep it quick. Thanks for reading, you guys are the best, I hope it's a lovely week for everyone! Also, fuck college.


	4. amor vincit omnia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In order: fluff, angst, angry fluff.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey there!
> 
> this chapter title is so disgustingly cliche I'm hating myself a little. 
> 
> anyway, <3

( When Adam wakes up, he doesn’t open his eyes right away. Instead, he burrows further into his pillow, curling tighter against the warm body beside him and basking in the warmth. Their room at the Barns is never cold like his at St. Agnes, and sometimes Adam wishes they could never leave this bed. 

 

He feels arms pulling him closer, caressing his back with gentle fingers, and he shivers. Finally giving in, Adam blinks, taking in the sight of Ronan, still soft from sleep, watching him with eyes impossibly blue. “Hey.”

 

“Hey, yourself,” Ronan grins, pressing a kiss to the corner of his mouth, “do you have work today?”

 

Yes, if he called Boyd to ask him for an extra shift, the man wouldn’t refuse. “Nah,” Adam says instead, hiding a yawn on Ronan’s shoulder, “I’ve got the day off.”

 

“The whole day?”

 

“Yeah,” he rolls to his side, propped on his elbow, and falls silent. He can’t think of words worthy of intruding on this peace. He smiles sleepily, knows his eyes are baring whatever is left of his soul right now, but he can’t bring himself to care. 

 

“I should call Gansey,” Ronan suddenly says, reaching for the cell phone resting on the bedside table and almost toppling them both to the ground in the process.

 

Adam forces himself to frown, still feeling too content to be properly annoyed, “what the hell.”

 

“You know how he is, he might worry,” he shrugs, already dialing and pressing the thing to his ear, “if we don’t show up at all until tomorrow.”

 

His eyebrow climbs to his hairline in amusement, his grin widens, “oh, is that so? We did agree for dinner at Nino’s tonight, you know.”

 

“Fuck that,” Ronan says with feeling, “we’re not leaving this room until tomorrow,” he laughs, “we’re not leaving this  _ bed  _ until tomorrow– oh, hey, Dick.”

 

Adam lies back down, his right hand finding the hem of Ronan’s shirt and playing with it, fingers brushing warm skin every so often. He hears the hitch on his breath, closes his eyes, satisfied.

 

“No, no one’s fucking dying, chill, dude,” Ronan is saying, “for fuck’s sake, Gansey. I just called to– yes, I’m sure everything’s okay,  _ jesus _ – will you let me finish?”

 

“Give him a break,” Adam offers, eyes still closed, “you willingly using a phone  _ is  _ a wonder of wonders.”

 

“Fuck off, Parrish,” he kicks Adam in the shin, “no, not you, idiot, is your name Parrish, now? Yes, he is here, yes, we’re all fine. That’s none of your fucking business, tell Cheng to shove it. Tell the  _ Maggot  _ to shove it, then.  _ Listen _ , just FYI, we’re ditching you guys until tomorrow, don’t bother calling, I’m not opening the door if any of you fuckers show up at the Barns.”

 

He tosses his phone away carelessly, and it bounces on the mattress once, twice, before falling off the edge and to the ground with a dull thud. Adam winces shakes his head. “You’re such an asshole.” It sounds too fond, too soft, to be anything but a compliment. 

 

“You love it,” Ronan shoots back, crawling back under the covers and draping himself over Adam. Sadly, correcting him would be a lie. “I’m going to kiss you now.”

 

“Is that an announcement?” Adam laughs, hands coming up to cradle Ronan’s face anyway, “Okay.”

 

They kiss, and no matter how desperately Adam clings to it, the memory fades into darkness. )

 

*

 

It’s night when he wakes up, the moon is high in the sky. So many more stars litter the dark blue, Adam is breathless. There’s no view like this in Yale. Grass tickles his feet, and he realizes he’s standing barefoot in the middle of a field.

 

Panic begins to set in, because  _ holy shit, is he losing time again– _

 

“What the hell even, Parrish.”

 

Adam spins around, swaying as he loses his footing on his haste. Ronan is standing a few feet away, the Barns farther behind him. There’s a frown on his face and Chainsaw is perched on his shoulder. He moves closer, closer, close enough Adam can see the edges of his tattoos curling on the base of his neck, the way his eyes are tired and so, so unfairly blue. 

 

“Parrish?” He asks again, quieter, real concern escaping to the night air, “what now?”

 

His question is short and irritated, but Adam knows better. Because Adam  _ remembers _ now, and even if he didn’t, he likes to think he’s good at knowing Ronan Lynch. So instead of snapping back and knowing honesty would be appreciated, he says, “I don’t know.”

 

It stops Ronan on his tracks. He narrows his eyes, Chainsaw flaps her wings. “What are you doing out here at ass o’clock?”

 

“Not sure,” Adam shrugs, too raw, too close to Ronan, too restless to string coherent sentences. “Just woke up.”

 

Ronan frowns, aggravated, “of course you did. Sleepwalking now, sure, why not.”

 

Chainsaw, apparently done with the situation, takes off, flying back towards the house. They watch her in silence until she disappears inside the open front door. When he turns, he finds Ronan is already looking at him, as he had been doing for the past days. Adam looks back, as he had been doing for the past few days. “Ask me,” he says because Adam remembers now, and even if he didn’t, he needs them to move on from this standstill, “Ronan, ask me.”

 

He swallows, and Adam can’t help tracking the movement, his eyes following down the curve of his throat, the hollow of his collarbone– “Did it work?”

 

A grin, “yes.”

 

A question, “you remember?”

 

An answer, “ _ everything.” _

 

Adam takes a step forward, then another, then another, because this time around things are a little different even while staying the same and he needs to be the one crossing the bridge. He reaches a hand, feels lightning striking under his skin and burning Lichtenberg figures along his veins, traces his lips, his jawline until Ronan catches it, fingers fitting perfectly in between Adam’s, and shifts slightly, pressing a kiss to the inside of Adam’s wrist.

 

And Adam, he’s just–

 

He can’t– 

 

He  _ needs–  _

 

_ Ronan. _

 

Kissing Ronan is breathing again after drowning underwater for so long, it’s a world growing on his chest until he feels like his ribcage might be too small to contain and all these stars might spill. It’s summer and spring and it’s starlight behind his eyelids. 

 

It’s everything he’s missed, and it’s his future, in all its possibilities.

 

“ _ Adam”,  _ Ronan says, and it sounds like a prayer, too holy to be anything more than a whisper, to be directed at Adam. But Ronan’s hands are on his waist, holding on for dear life like he’s afraid Adam might disappear if he let’s go, his eyes still closed and he’s catching Adam’s lower lip with his teeth–

 

There is Ronan, and there is Adam, and there’s no thinking at all.

 

*

 

They sit in the grass, because Adam’s knees feel weak and wobbly, and his head is dizzy and dazed. They sit leaning against each other because the night is cold like every hour after 2 am is cold, but Ronan is warm.

 

“Is this going to be a thing?”

 

“I mean,” Adam frowns, “I was hoping so?”

 

Ronan makes a face.

 

“Oh, you meant the sleepwalking.” Adam laughs quietly, relieved, “I’m not sure, it hasn’t happened before.”

 

“We’ll have to lock all the doors if it does, and do something about the stairs,” Ronan says, and it’s stupidly endearing the fact he’s suggesting this. “Jesus, you’re a nightmare.”

 

Adam almost snorts, because his lips are still tingling and the minute he sat down, an arm draped itself over his shoulder to pull him close. It figures, after everything, Ronan Lynch is still full of shit. 

 

So instead of taking the bait, he focuses on more pressing matters. “You don’t lock your doors at night?”

 

Ronan shrugs, like it’s no big deal, like there isn’t a sea of people who might come looking for him one day. Like he isn’t carrying the same wonderful secret that got his father killed.

 

“Opal likes to watch the stars, sometimes,” Ronan tells him, “so I let one of the doors open.”

 

“Where is she, anyway?”

 

“D.C. with Matthew and Declan,” he grimaces, “figured it would be safer for her, not being pulled into the shitshow.”

 

Imagining Opal, carefree and wild, confined to Declan’s admittedly huge apartment, surrounded by all the grey and white that wraps the city, too much concrete and gravel and not enough green, it’s impossible. She must be going stir crazy. “She must be driving Declan up the wall,” Adam comments idly instead.

 

“She likes his ties,” Ronan grins, dangerous and wild and endlessly smug, “says they’re perfect midnight snacks.”

 

He laughs, feeling the empty space on his chest where longing had curled up in being slowly hollowed again and filled with something warmer, brighter, kinder. The stars twinkle above their heads, glittering in the dark sky and the moon casts everything in silver light.

 

It’s so very cliché, Adam can’t help snickering. “I wonder,” he says when Ronan looks up questioningly, an answering, softer, with dusted off edges smile on his lips, “from who Cabeswater got the chick flick scenario idea.”

 

Ronan looks around, taking in everything, and Adam can see understanding dawning on his eyes, the moment he realizes Cabeswater brought them  _ here _ , the middle of a idillic field, under moonlight and constellations of stars. If this is its way of apologizing, it’s not totally bad, Adam would give it that. “Gansey, probably.”

 

“Probably,” Adam nods sagely, amusement bubbling up happily on his soul, threatening to overflow, “it’s a very Kodak moment.”

 

“I don’t know,” Ronan looks up, squinting at the cloudless sky, “I’m not sure it’s dramatic enough for a movie script ending. Maybe if it was raining?”

 

“Are you thinking about The Notebook?” Adam laughs at his indignant spluttering, head lolling to rest against Ronan’s shoulder, before wistfully following his gaze up to the thin, pale sliver of white that is the moon. “I could make it rain, I think, if we were at Cabeswater. I could ask, at least, and it would probably agree, since it’s for you.”

 

There’s a long pause, stretched out glaringly in the silence. Adam tries to turn a litte to look at Ronan, but the arm around him tightens, trapping him against his body with a grumble. He nuzzles Ronan’s neck in response, soothed by the smell of cigarettes, and rain, and petrichor. Still, his amusement bubbles up, up, up, until it spills. “Are you blushing?”

 

“Fuck off,” Ronan growls.

 

Adam grins, knowing he doesn’t mean it, basking in the fact he  _ remembers  _ bickering and laughing with Ronan countless times just like this, in the Barns, at Monmouth, at his dorm. It feels like no time at all between  _ then  _ and  _ now,  _ not with the memories still fluctuating, still shifting, still drifting in and out of focus. 

 

But mostly, it feels like happiness.

 

It prompts him into asking after a minute of silence, “hey, can I ask you a question?”

 

“Shoot.”

 

“When did I– you know. I mean, why did you.” Adam sighs, taking a deep breath before starting again. “What happened? That made you stay away? I’m not, I don’t know, blaming you,” he adds, needing to explain himself properly, needing Ronan to understand what he’s trying to ask, “it’s just that I know you, Ronan. But there are a few blank spots by the end of that year.”

 

Ronan is quiet for a long time, not looking at anywhere in particular, but his hand is rubbing circles on Adam’s shoulder over his shirt, so he can’t be mad. He heaves a tired sigh and begins talking in a flat whisper. 

 

*

 

_ Ronan absolutely hates universities, but he loathes Ivy League schools even more. They are all nothing but Aglionby all over again with even more bullshit. _

 

_ The levels of bullshit are off the charts, really. _

 

_ He hates them, hates himself for even stepping inside one of their campuses. _

 

_ The thing is: Ronan Lynch may absolutely hate Ivy League Colleges but he absolutely loves Adam Parrish more. _

 

_ And it’s only this unbearable missing that makes him drive all the way to Yale in the middle of the night, pushing the BMW until the engines are screeching against the pressure. _

 

_ No, that’s not entirely true.  _

 

_ It’s not just the longing. That, Ronan can bury deep on the soil along the new plantations, can let be trampled by the cattle while he tends to them, can shred to pieces while he tears through paperwork and dreams documents for the Barns. _

 

_ What gives him the final push is this unshakable feeling that his world is about to be tilted sideways. This itch underneath his skin telling him something is off, off, off.  _

 

_ He hasn’t survived this long by ignoring his instincts. _

 

_ So he drives and drives and drives, tries not to think about how Gansey hasn’t called in weeks, or how Blue hasn’t sent a letter in even longer. Or how Robobee hasn’t buzzed through his window to fly around his kitchen. _

 

_ Most of all, he tries not to think about the growing gaps on Adam’s memories, the way he frowns sometimes when talking about Henrietta but doesn’t know how to finish his story, the way he looks at Ronan sometimes like he has no idea what Ronan is talking about. He forcefully doesn’t think about the silences. _

 

_ He knocks on the door. _

 

_ There’s silence, then shuffling, then it’s being unlocked and carefully opened. _

 

_ “Hey,” he offers, leaning on the wall and ignoring the way his heart stutters, misses a beat, another, and proceeds to try and compensate by going rabbit quick.  _

 

_ Ronan hates feeling like the rabbit of this story. He refuses to run away from this. _

 

_ Adam looks sleep ruffled, hair sticking everywhere and pillow lines carved on his cheek. He frowns, looking Ronan up and down, before he blinks, smiles the smile that feels like the sun is coming down from the sky just to shine from under his skin and warm Ronan all over. “Hey yourself.” _

 

_ He moves to let him in, hand curling on Ronan’s leather jacket to pull him inside. Adam closes the door behind them, presses Ronan against it and the doorknob is painful at his back but Adam’s mouth is hot and pliant against his. _

 

_ That should be enough to ease the tension coiling on his chest. _

 

_ It’s not. _

 

_ Because there had been a brief moment, less than a second, really, where Adam looked at Ronan and saw a stranger.  _

 

_ It was less than a second, but it was there, along with the time lapses and frowns and missing names. _

 

_ Adam is forgetting all about Glendower and Gansey and Blue and Henry. _

 

_ Adam is forgetting Ronan. _

 

_ His fingers tighten involuntarily around Adam’s waist, curling over the soft fabric of his shirt, and Adam pulls away to breathe, presses his face against Ronan’s neck. When he speaks, his voice is quiet, muffled, “Why are you here?” Lips on his neck, warm breathing on his ear; a confession: “I missed you.” _

 

_ “Needed to see you,” Ronan lets go of the shirt, hands finding the skin under it.  _

 

_ “Why?” Now Adam sounds worried, stepping back only enough to look him in the eye. Adam’s eyes are blue like the ocean Ronan never got around to see. “Is everything okay?” _

 

_ There’s nothing okay. If Cabeswater was still a forest in the middle of Virginia, Ronan would be burning it to the ground now. “Don’t know,” he says truthfully, because he hasn’t figured out yet what this itching means. He’s still scratching, hoping to break skin and bleed the answer into existence. “Just needed to fucking see you.” _

 

_ “Well,” Adam laughs, “I’m not complaining.” _

 

_ He tugs Ronan out of his jacket and towards the bed, and Ronan follows, shaking hands and shallow breaths and shattering skeleton. “Adam?” _

 

_ “Yeah?”  _

 

_ “Do you remember when I first kissed you?” _

 

_ Adam frowns up at him, shifting on the bed until their legs are tangled under the covers and he’s lying on Ronan’s chest. “Yeah, in your room at the Barns. Why?” _

 

_ “Why were we at the Barns?” _

 

_ “Matthew’s going away party,” he frowns harder, forehead wrinkling, “right?” _

 

_ “Why was he going away?” _

 

_ “Declan made him,” Adam is annoyed, Ronan can hear it in his voice, the defensive edge creeping in, suspicion in his eyes. “Why? What’s with the twenty questions?” _

 

_ “Why did Declan made him go?” _

 

_ “Something about school, I think, better schools in D.C.,” he sits up, frowning and angry in the way that means he can’t remember, knows there’s something missing on his memories. “I don’t know, Ronan, ask your brothers not me. What the hell is wrong with you today?” _

 

_ “Adam,” Ronan says, calmly, “why did Declan make him go?” _

 

_ “Fuck off,” he scrambles out of the bed, sheets catching on his ankles, “if you’re going to be this fucking weird, you didn’t need to bother coming here.” _

 

_ “Do you remember Gansey?” _

 

_ “What the fuck are you talking about now?” _

 

_ “What about Blue?” Ronan feels desperation clawing at his throat, strangling the words out of his mouth. “You remember her, right? Your embarrassing crush?” _

 

_ “Ronan, I swear to god– is this what this is about? You’re jealous? Because we talked about this–” _

 

_ “Glendower? Cabeswater?” _

 

_ “Okay, now, those don’t even sound like real words–” _

 

_ He doesn’t finish his tirade, because suddenly Adam is doubling over, clutching at his head, gasping for breath. _

 

_ Ronan is at his side before Adam can finish passing out and hit the ground. He catches him, feeling the heart-stopping panic flooding his veins, turning blood on ice. Adam is breathing, shallow and slow.  _

 

_ Ronan’s hands are shaking as he carries him back to the bed, because–  _

 

_ Should he call an ambulance? Cabeswater wouldn’t let Adam–  _

 

_ Would it? _

 

_ He can drive Adam to the hospital. It will be faster than an ambulance anyway. But how can normal doctors fix something magic-related? Would they make it worse?  _

 

_ Fear is catching at his chest, desperation is clawing at his throat. Ronan forcefully doesn’t think about how holding a dead body years ago, blood dripping through his fingers. _

 

_ The clock on the bedside table ticks, ticks, ticks, before color returns to Adam’s cheeks. Before his breathing evens out. Before fainting turns into sleeping and Ronan’s knees buckle in relief. He collapses on the floor beside the bed, watches Adam’s eye flutter open and take everything in. Emotions flicker through quickly; blankness verging on fear, confusion, surprise, then bright happiness. Blue eyes blink down at him, a lazy smile bursting through sleep. _

 

_ This is it, Ronan thinks. This is how it ends. Because there’s nowhere to go from here; all those headaches, and now this? What happens the next time he tries to remember something?  _

 

It’ll kill him.

 

_ There’s a star collapsing in his chest, setting everything ablaze and swallowing up his heart, and so there is no space left for panicking. And maybe, if he’s being honest, that’s because Ronan had known this would happen. He’d figured it out somewhere along the roads stretching from Henrietta and New Haven. _

 

_ And if he’s being even more honest, Ronan is a bit relieved, too. The kind of relief you only feel after the other shoe drops and you think yes, there it is. The kind of relief that says yes, at least it’s over now, you don’t have to hold your breath anymore. _

 

_ Because Ronan is a dreamer and he knows when he is awake and when he is not, and this has always been a daydream. _

 

_ “Ronan? When did you get here?” _

 

_ There is a choice laid on his feet. “A few minutes ago,” he says, “the door was unlocked, while you were playing sleeping beauty.” _

 

_ There has never been any choice at all.  _

 

_ “Well, it’s the middle of the night,” Adam sits up, unaware of the blood stain on his pillow and the thunderstorm on Ronan’s chest. He reaches for Ronan, and Ronan lets himself be dragged into the bed, shifting and maneuvering until he’s sitting with his back against the wall and Adam’s head on his lap.  _

 

_ He runs fingers through his hair, hopes Adam can’t feel them shaking against his scalp. Adam has his eyes closed, already halfway through drifting off again. There’s no trace of the horrible paleness that had spread on his skin and his heart is beating strong and steady under Ronan’s hand. “Go back to sleep,” Ronan tells him, quiet because he doesn’t trust his voice not to break. _

 

_ Adam hums, sighing softly and leaning into his touch. Then opens his eyes with difficulty, watches Ronan watching him, says, “I’m glad you’re here,” and fighting off sleep seems to be a losing battle, so his eyes close, “I don’t have classes tomorrow morning, we can stay in.” _

 

_ Ronan nods, remembers Adam can’t see it, whispers a yes. He waits until his breathing evens out, until the hand holding his goes slack, until the room is left in a pin-dropping silence. Ronan slips out of the bed, careful not to wake him, and doesn’t look back, because if he does, he might not be able to leave at all. _

 

_ Instead, he looks around for anything that might trigger a question. He finds Adam’s keys, slides the one to the Barns from the ring and pockets it. The tarot deck goes next. A photograph of them, sitting on the hood of the BMW, Monmouth behind them. Briefly, Ronan wonders if the roommate will be a problem, but dismisses it; he never met the guy, and Adam said they barely talk anyway.  _

 

_ After, the room reminds him of St. Agnes, with the bare mattress and the bare walls and the bare cupboards. _

 

_ Ronan spares a last look at the boy sleeping, trying to commit everything to memory, and slips out of the room. There’s something cracking as he pulls away from Yale University, speeds down the empty road, but that’s okay, this, he knows how to deal with.  _

 

_ He feels burned down to bare bones, presses harder on the accelerator, and leaves the ashes on a side road near the state border along with the contents of his stomach. He takes the jagged edges and the splinters and wears them like brass knuckles over his fist. Ronan knows Adam won’t remember anything at all in the morning, knows now this itch tugging him forward had been a warning from Cabeswater– a courtesy call.  _

 

_ Ronan doesn’t believe in apologies but saying goodbye is still more than he had hoped for. _

 

*

 

“You looked like you were having a stroke,” Ronan finishes, “I wasn’t going to risk you having one for real.”

 

Adam is silent. He’s seething; this is his temper in its entirety, a volcano threatening to level up the land, burning everything down in its wake and turning water into poison. He’s angry at Cabeswater, for being entirely too ethereal, too magical, too unreal to be held accountable. He’s angry at Gansey, for inviting himself in their lives like a quiet breeze and then becoming a hurricane, dragging them in his quest. Mostly, he’s angry at himself, for holding on, and for letting go.

 

“Excuse me,” he says instead, making a half-hearted attempt at moving and giving up quickly when the hand on his shoulder tightens, “I need to go set a magical forest on fire.”

 

Ronan makes a strangled sound that could maybe pass as laughter in different circumstances. “That would be counterproductive, I think.”

 

“I don’t care,” Adam grits his teeth, reigning in a more scathing remark. “It hurt you. It violated our trust, and  _ it hurt you.” _

 

He’s looking at Adam with an odd expression, like he can’t quite believe what Adam is saying, can’t understand what’s going on.

 

“Ronan,” Adam shifts, facing him, needing to look, to touch, to see. “ _ It hurt you.  _ I want nothing more than set the whole forest on fire.”

 

“You would do that?” He sounds disbelieving, but there’s steel on his tongue, too. Adam bets he’s not the only one who promised brimstone and hellfire for what Cabeswater did. 

 

“For you?” Adam cradles Ronan’s face carefully, almost tenderly, if there had been enough space on either of them left for tenderness. His hands don’t shake, a silent promise that they would hold a match just as steady. “ _ I’d tear the whole world apart.” _

 

They kiss, until the air is unbearably cold against Adam’s heated skin, until he’s shaking with want and need, until his heart feels like it might crawl out of his ribcage to lay bare at their feet.

 

Adam marvels in the feeling of fingers tangling on his hair, in the softening of Ronan’s eyes, in the way starlight clings to his skin. He thinks of his dream, of the tentative apology that it was. 

 

Stars don’t take sides, but maybe magical forests do.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> writing is hard, but writing Ronan is harder
> 
> but hey?
> 
> thanks.


	5. Hannibal ad portas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Slice of life, grocery shopping, talks that need to be talked.

 

Waking up is a slow process, and in the warm comfort of a soft bed, with an arm loosely wrapped around his waist, it’s even slower. Adam stretches, feeling the arm tightening and pulling him closer, flush to an even warmer body. Still, he keeps his eyes closed and burrows further under the blankets.

 

Sleeping in every once in a while won’t kill him.

 

Right now, curled around Ronan in a cocoon of blankets, he doesn’t think anything will.

 

Except, maybe, their friends.

 

The door is thrown open, violently slamming against the wall, and Adam would glare at Ronan for not locking it last night if it wouldn’t mean moving. Then, “ _ Ronan! Adam is gone!”  _ It’s Gansey, breathlessly panicking, and by the tumbling, rustling sounds that follow him, Blue and Henry must be right behind.

 

Ronan shuffles beside him, sitting up against the headboard, and the blankets end up entirely on top of Adam. “What the hell are you talking about?” 

 

“He didn’t come down for breakfast,” that’s Blue, fast-paced and angry, “so we went to wake him up–”

 

“And the room was empty,” it’s Henry that finishes, hesitant and soft, “like, leaving-in-the-middle-of-the-night empty.”

 

“Do you think he left for New Haven?” Gansey asks, uncharacteristically hesitant. “The BMW is still outside, maybe we can still catch up to him if he’s on foot.”

 

“He could’ve called an Uber?” Henry suggests, and Adam can hear the grimace in his voice.

 

“Ubers don’t come this far,” Ronan tells them, sounding as if he’s trying very hard to hide his amusement. Although, it probably comes off strained for the others, because there’s a pained noise from the doorway.

 

“Well!” Blue demands and Adam hears the noise of her boot colliding with something, “what are we waiting for? Come  _ on. _ I thought you of all people would be out of the door by now!”

 

“Parrish can do whatever he wants,” Ronan says, shrugging, and the motion jostles Adam, making him frown and huff an irritated sigh. Ronan shivers, and Adam snickers quietly, nuzzling his waistline and pressing a kiss to his hip bone, above the hem of his sweatpants just to hear the hitch on his breath again. He clears his throat before speaking again, “if you want to go after him, that’s not my problem.”

 

It predictably sends Blue on an incensed rant– as it had been supposed to, Adam figures. It’s kind of nice to know his friends care enough to look for him if he disappeared in the middle of the night, and that’s probably what makes him finally take pity on them. “Stop being a shithead, Ronan.” He sits up, letting the covers pool at their waist, and yawns, taking in the surprised faces by the door. “Did you really think I’d walk all the way to town? In the middle of the night?”

 

Gansey is still gaping at them, blinking and looking a little shell-shocked. Blue, on the other hand, just stops her tirade, pauses, readjusting, and raises one eyebrow, “well, this escalated quickly.”

 

“Did it, though?” Henry, who had been sending them considering looks ever since they had walked in together on Gansey’s hotel room, muses.

 

Ronan elbows him lightly, Adam elbows him back, smiling. There’s no rush to explain anything, not with sunlight streaming in as the curtains flicker in the wind, not with Ronan pressed against him, not with the memory of trailing kisses down his neck still clear on his mind, not with Blue and Gansey and Henry grinning back so bright. 

 

“I’m hungry,” Gansey blurts out after it becomes clear they’re done talking about it. “No one had breakfast yet.”

 

Adam snorts, “doesn’t any of you know how to cook?”

 

“There’s no yogurt on this house,” Blue says, arms crossed and chin jutting out defiantly, “I’m holding my cooking skills hostage until you buy it.”

 

“Gansey tried,” Henry offers diplomatically, “so we might owe you a new toaster.”

 

“There wasn’t anywhere to plug it! How was I supposed to know how it works?”

 

“It works exactly like a normal fucking toaster,” Ronan deadpans.

 

“Ah, that explains it, then,” Adam nods sagely. Somehow, it’s comforting to know Gansey’s inability to cook is still a constant in the world. “There’s plenty of stuff you could eat without needing a toaster, though.”

 

The bickering continues, going back and forth between the four of them, but Adam mostly tunes it out, letting the chatter wash over him and lull him back to sleep. He slumps against Ronan and dozes off, in and out of conscience as the conversation goes on around him. At some point, a hand has started running through his hair and Adam’s migrated to Ronan’s chest instead of his shoulder, but he’s asleep before he can really process it or care.

 

“Parrish can make pancakes.” 

 

That wakes him up, alright. 

 

“Parrish cannot, in fact, make pancakes,” he says sourly, unwrapping himself from Ronan and covering up a yawn. “Are we still talking about breakfast?”

 

“Oh my god, pancakes, yes,” Blue perks up, her whole face lighting up, “I’m  _ starving. _ ”

 

“I haven’t actually cooked in months,” Adam tries to reason, frowning at the raised eyebrows he’s met with, “what? I’m a college student, why would I cook? There’s a perfectly good cafeteria there!”

 

“Do you really want to risk Gansey trying to cook again?” Henry asks, gesturing the boy beside him. “Do you want the toaster’s sacrifice to be in vain?”

 

“Hold on, why are all of you still here? Go away!”

 

Ronan nudges him. “I know you can make pancakes, I’ve stayed the night at St. Agnes before.”

 

“Stop throwing me under the bus,” he nudges back, narrowing his eyes, “do  _ you  _ want pancakes?”

 

A shrug. “I could eat.” Adam glares. He concedes, “I really want pancakes.”

 

Sighing loudly, Adam pinches the bridge of his nose. “ _ Fine.”  _ Then, looking at the three idiots still standing in the doorway. “You won, now shoo, get out, I need to change!”

 

They leave with surprisingly little resistance after that.

 

Adam gives himself another minute to bask in the silence, counts to ten, and then gets to his feet, pulling on a shirt and sweatpants he finds. There’s a hoodie draped over the desk and he shrugs it on, thankful for how soft it is against his skin. 

 

Satisfied with the clothes, he surveys the room for the last time, checking if he forgot something. The bedroom is in a familiar state of disarray, a controlled chaos he doesn’t mind navigating, almost looks forward to relearning the key. 

 

His eyes fall on the bed. Ronan has flopped back on his pillow, seeming on the verge of drifting off again, and his tattoo catches Adam’s attention just by being there, just like three years ago, just like it always does. It demands his attention and Adam lets his eyes linger on broad shoulders, the curve of his spine, the dip on his lower back. Unbridled affection swells on his chest, deep-rooted and steady, and  _ how could he forget this?  _

 

Adam wants to kiss him, so he does. He leans down and presses his lips to Ronan’s, feels him smiling before his mouth parts and Adam kisses him soft and slow and breathless. He kisses him because he can, because he wants to, because it’s been three years and _ how can he be still allowed this?  _

 

He closes the door quietly behind him and makes his way downstairs, two stairs at a time.

 

*

 

In the kitchen, the clock above the fridge tells him it’s almost eleven o’clock, and the calendar nailed,  _ nailed,  _ to the wall tells him that yes, it’s been only two days since Ronan found him on that bar near campus. It’s Sunday morning, lazy and sunlit like an old photograph, and Henry is sitting at the table, sipping coffee once again. 

 

It feels tentatively like routine.

 

Feeling content enough to be forgiving, Adam nods at his direction, “morning,” he peers inside the coffee pot, pleasantly surprised to find it half full. He casts a suspicious look at Henry’s mug, wonders how much of that is milk.

 

Henry gives him a once-over, a grin spreading quickly on his face. He raises a hand, looking expectantly at Adam. “Come on, high-five.”

 

“No.” Adam might be feeling too happy to be annoyed, but it’s still too early for Henry’s nonsensical ideas. He pours himself a cup, beginning to rummage through cupboards for the ingredients. When he looks up, Henry is still waiting, a sly smile in place. “What, why?”

 

“Dude. You just got laid. We’re all frat boys.” Henry not-whines, “let’s have some semblance of normalcy. We high-five, I say  _ nice _ , and we all go on with our lives. Now, come on.” He looks pointedly at his raised hand.

 

The fridge is almost empty, but Adam finds a carton of milk, shaking it a little and nodding satisfied when he hears the liquid sloshing inside. He leaves it on the counter along with the flour, sugar, and eggs. A cursory glance near the stove and he finds the oil. All he needs now is the baking powder.

 

“Don’t leave me hanging,” Henry calls, setting his mug on the table. 

 

Adam gives him an unimpressed look. “I live in the dorms.” He finds the baking powder on the very back of one of the cupboards. “And Gansey has an apartment near his own campus. You’re the only one in a fraternity.”

 

“Still,” Henry insists, “up-high.”

 

“No.”

 

He turns his back to Henry, dumping the dry ingredients in a bowl, then proceeds to add the rest, mixing it absently minded. Adam finds he doesn’t mind cooking this morning, without the urgency of a deadline or somewhere to be; time passes slowly, dripping like spilled syrup, thick like molasses. 

 

Footsteps echo behind him, the sound of a chair screeching against the tiled floor, and Adam turns around to find Gansey sitting opposite Henry. He smiles when he sees Adam, offering his fist, and Adam doesn’t think twice before fist-bumping him. 

 

Except, that might have been a mistake because Henry grins delightedly and they say in perfect chorus, “ _ nice. _ ” When Gansey high fives Henry, Adam isn’t even surprised.

 

“I can’t believe this,” he tells them, blinking in bewilderment; the spoon he had been using to mix drips pancake batter on the floor. “I can _ not _ believe this.”

 

Ronan chooses that moment to enter the kitchen, sidestepping Adam easily and pouring himself some coffee, before leaning against the counter. He regards the two men sitting at his table with shit-eating grins, then Adam, standing shell-shocked. “Believe what?”

 

“I’ve been played,” Adam says, “I’ve been played. By  _ Gansey.” _

 

He makes a non-committal noise, shrugging in a  _ what can ya do _ gesture. “That’s really fucking embarrassing.” He sets his mug on the counter, a twitch of his jaw betraying his amusement. “How do you feel about reaching a new low?”

 

It snaps Adam out of his daze. “Shut up,” he scowls, going back to making the damn pancakes, “ _ assholes,  _ all of you.”

 

Ignoring the conversations around him, Adam focuses back on the task at hand. He lets himself smile, turning around to hide it and feels the warm certainty that  _ yes, this is home, this is it.  _ Something hits him on the arm, falling on the counter beside the leftover bag of flour with a thud. Adam snorts, casting Ronan a sidelong glance, but adds the chocolate chips to the mix anyway.

 

The smell of fresh pancakes fills the kitchen, and he can’t help feeling stupidly proud as everyone zeroes in on the plate he places on the center of the table. There’s already a new pot of coffee beside it, and a bottle of maple syrup. The jar of Nutella appears soon after. 

 

It’s ridiculously domestic, and it’s ridiculously nice, so Adam simply pulls up a chair for himself, lets Ronan pour an ungodly amount of syrup on his plate, and enjoys the reprieve while it lasts.

 

“So,” Gansey says, grinning excitedly, “when are we going to see the chickens?”

 

Blue and Adam immediately perk up, exchanging a delighted look. Ronan groans. “There’s no  _ we _ here. Don’t you have another dead king to look for?”

 

“No, no,” Blue sets down her fork and it clinks against her plate, “let’s talk more about these chickens. I wanna hear more about the chickens, don’t you want to hear about the chickens, Adam?”

 

He grins. “I really, really do. Tell us more about the chickens, Gansey.” He feels a kick under the table, and when he looks up to Ronan’s murderous scowl, Adam struggles to keep a straight face.

 

But Gansey is undeterred; with the vocal support of both Adam and Blue, he’s thriving. “Oh yes, Ronan said he’s trying out growing chickens. I said I was going to help him take care of them today.” His eyes glint with excitement, “they are fascinating creatures, I really had no idea. Do you think they laid eggs already?”

 

“Fascinating,” Blue echoes, amazed by the exchange.

 

“I’m going to feed you to them, Gansey, I swear to god, if you don’t shut the fuck up.” Ronan growls, “I’ll lock you in the bathroom and feed them the key.”

 

“You’ll do no such a thing, look,” Gansey sticks a leg from under the table, pointing at his previously hidden boots. “I’ve got these rain boots especially for this. I’ve read articles on chicken caring last night. It’s going to be great.”

 

‘Yes, Ronan,” Adam agrees faintly, still awestruck by the impossibly fluorescent yellow of the shoes, “he’s got the boots. There’s no going back now.”

 

“Fuck off,” Ronan replies, but his heart is not in it. Which, really, it’s very understandable, because Gansey’s rain boots are just too horrible; they’re a trainwreck you can’t stop looking. “I can’t– where the fuck did you get the ugliest pair of shoes in the world? Holy hell, man. That’s just.  _ How?” _

 

Gansey hides his boots under the table again, looking way too defensive for someone who willingly put those monstrosities on. “They’re not that bad.”

 

“Look, I love you, you know I do,” Blue says, taking his hand on hers, “but they really fucking are.”

 

“Lies and slander. You are all colorblind. Henry, tell them I’m right.”

 

“Please, don’t drag me into this, I just figured out the wifi password, which reminds me–  _ suck it, Lynch.” _

 

“Henry,” Gansey looks at him with wide, betrayed eyes, “I thought you were coming with us?”

 

Up until now, Henry had been typing away on his laptop, happily sipping his coffee, but this gives him pause. He looks up, face illuminated by the soft blue glow of the screen, and says with a flat, unimpressed voice, “did you know chickens are the closest living relative to the Tyrannosaurus Rex? I’ve watched Jurassic Park before, so no, thanks, but no.”

 

It’s all very downhill from there.

 

*

 

Adam looks up at the sky, taking in the cloudless blue, Chainsaw flying around, and the nearly unbearable heat of the midday sun. He blinks a few times, trying to disperse the spots on his vision, then turns to grin at the pair approaching him. Ronan looks mildly displeased at the idea of losing sight of both Adam and Blue for longer than a few minutes, crossing his arms as he stalks towards the BMW, while Blue trails behind, entirely too smug at having gotten a ride to town to get her yogurt. 

 

They should probably stop by Fox Way, pick up Blue’s engineless Camaro.

 

Still leaning against the hood of the BMW, Adam holds out a hand when they get within arms reach. Ronan scowls, “what?”

 

“The keys,” he answers easily, not bothered in the least, “last I checked, I need those to drive.”

 

Ronan scowls harder, stopping in front of him. Adam waits. He grumbles. Adam raises one eyebrow. Finally, he huffs, digging around his pocket for the car keys and grumbling all the while.

 

“You’re the ones who didn’t let me stop by the dorms before dragging me to the airport, you know,” Adam says, amused. “I can’t keep wearing your clothes.”

 

He receives a pointed look at his state of dressing and a noise that clearly means  _ why the fuck not.  _ “Well, for one, they don’t exactly fit and I’m not walking around in sweatpants or yesterday’s jeans forever.”

 

Ronan huffs again.

 

“You can always ask Gansey to drive Blue instead, then.”

 

A disbelieving snort.

 

“Or, Blue could drive herself. Or Henry.”

 

The disgusted noise is loud enough to make even Blue, who had been fiddling with her phone and pretending not to be paying attention, snort.

 

“Okay,” Adam agrees. A pause, where Ronan squints at him. “Are you going to use your words? Or can we go?”

 

Ronan squints some more. Then, “you have new freckles. They look like little stars.”

 

Blue chokes beside them. Adam can relate, honestly. “Oh my god.” She gapes, looking between them. “Oh my god, Adam’s blushing. Oh my god, that was so cute. Who are you and what have you done with Ronan?”

 

Adam would maybe come to her rescue if he hadn’t been too busy trying to get his blushing under control. 

 

“Once,” Ronan says, turning to Blue with a smirk that spells trouble and does nothing to dispel the blush heating Adam’s face, “I took the time to find all the constellations on his freckles. There were a lot; the Big Dipper, Canis Major, Orion, all of them.”

 

She gasps. “Oh my god. You’re secretly a sap. Oh my god. I can’t believe Henry is still scared of you. Oh my god. Why are you telling me this?”

 

The smirk grows. “Because there’s no fucking way someone is going to believe you.”

 

With that, Ronan tugs Adam to a quick kiss, ignoring Blue’s indignant squawk, and turns on his heel to stalk back to the house. 

 

“ _ Ronan Lynch,”  _ Blue yells after him, “ _ one day someone else will catch you being nice, and then I’ll have my eyewitness!”  _ She whirls on Adam with narrowed eyes, “ _ you _ . Let’s go before I murder your boyfriend.”

 

“Aye, aye, captain,” Adam laughs, walking around the BMW to get to the driver seat. Blue rolls her eyes at him, her lips curving in a long-suffering smile. “Where to first?”

 

“Grocery shopping,” she says, allowing him to change the subject, “then the mall to get your clothes and frozen yogurt.”

 

Adam nods, thoughtfully. He puts the car in reverse, watching Ronan flip them from the front door. “We should pick up lunch while we’re there. I’m thinking Chinese?”

 

Blue makes a face. “Only if we get Italian too.”

 

“Deal.” He nods solemnly. “Is your weird car still at Fox Way?”

 

“No,” she smiles sheepishly, “I left it in Baltimore.” 

 

He lets out a startled laugh, shaking his head as the bit of information clears on his mind. “Shit. John Hopkins?”

 

“Yeah,” Blue fully grins now, proud and happy and barely believing herself, “transferred last fall. It’s… I’m still having trouble believing it.”

 

“Congratulations, really,” Adam says truthfully, meaning every word, “you deserve it.”

 

“Thanks.” She gives him a savage smile, uncannily similar to Ronan. “I half want to visit my old high school, shove the acceptance letter on that counselor’s face.”

 

Adam glances at the dashboard clock, back at Blue. “That’s doable. They can survive on their own for thirty more minutes, I think.”

 

This time it’s Blue that laughs without meaning to. She pulls up one leg, hugging it to her chest, her sneakers shaking off dirt on the upholstery, and rests her face on her knee, cheek squished on her jeans. All in all, it would drive Ronan crazy if he saw her doing it with shoes on. But he isn’t here, and this is a nice car, but Adam isn’t very concerned by a little dirt, considering the number of times they carried bleeding things on the back seat. She laughs, and rolls down her window, lets the wind mess up her hair. “Ronan’s secretly a sap, and you’re secretly an instigator at heart. I’d better be the bridesmaid to this wedding.”

 

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Adam borrows Gansey’s diplomatic voice, praying his southern drawl doesn’t bleed into the words. Things in this car always tend to bleed, it seems. “Next subject, go.”

 

“I’m just saying, because between the two of you, eloping seems too much of a possibility.”

 

“Let’s talk Gansey, then.” He grips the wheel, lets his lips curl into a cheerful smile that he knows Blue would see right through. Mirrors and all that. “How are things going, traumatizing boots aside?”

 

It works wonders to steer her away from his life. Her eyes light up, even as a scowl darkens her face. “He’s an idiot. He means well, he always does, I guess. It’s a little weird, what with the three years gap, but we’re adjusting okay. Henry, too.” She adds, looking out the window and past the fields. They’re almost at Henrietta’s urban area, and a few houses are visible in the distance. “We talked, you know? Gansey and Henry and I. Before coming down here to pick up Ronan. We talked with him, too. It helped make sense of all the memories and gaps and shit. But we’re going to be okay,  _ more _ than okay.”

 

Adam considers her answer, watches the grass slowly turn into gravel, small buildings filling the sidewalks. Henrietta is a dusty, colorless, ordinary clusterfuck of a town, and Adam misses it like he misses the bruises and blows and cuts; which is to say, not at all. Still, as they drive by familiar streets and park on the half-empty parking lot, he thinks of riding a shopping cart breathlessly towards the BMW and figures  _ yes, we’re going to be more than okay. _

 

“Do you know what we actually need?” Adam asks once they are inside the too cold store, a shopping cart in front of them and no shopping list. Blue doesn’t answer, simply dumping dozens of yogurt cartels on the cart. “ _ Besides  _ yogurt. Like, do we need actual, grown-up food?”

 

“Beats me,” she shrugs, “we could always keep buying take out. I don’t know how much longer this will take. Or what  _ this  _ is either.”

 

“I think we should buy vegetables,” he says, steering them towards the greens aisle. He picks up a kale, stares at it with a grimace. Blue takes a step back, clear distaste on her face. Adam looks down at their cart, at the kale, back at Blue. “On a second thought, I think we need more yogurt.”

 

A new voice rumbles a snort from behind them. An old man, graying hair and graying eyes, with laughter lines that don’t look like laughter at all. “I do hope that’s not all you kids are planning on eating?” His voice is gentle, like a grandfather’s, and when he speaks, the lines soften into something that might pass as grinning.

 

“Don’t worry, mister,” Blue says politely, “we are eating all our greens. Well, except for kale, I guess.”

 

The man chuckles, and Adam feels a little more at ease, a little less defensive. The idea of some unknown enemy lurking on the shadows has been keeping him on edge, suspicious like he hadn’t been since high school and Barrington Whelk. 

 

It feels a lot like Barrington Whelk all over again. 

 

But this old man with his wooden cane is smiling beatifically at them, like something out of a Lifetime movie, and he looks frail and weak, like his shadow might swallow him up any time now, so Adam forces himself not to bristle when the man speaks again, “I’ll bet. My Annie is the same, if we left her alone, she’d live off sweets!” More grandfatherly chuckles. “What’s your name, kiddos?”

 

Alarm bells go off on his mind. Adam catches Blue’s elbow in a tight grip, hoping to communicate his sudden uneasy.  _ Names have power,  _ she had said.  _ And what’s willingly given has even more, _ he thinks. “We’re kind of in a hurry,” he apologizes, looking appropriately bashful with his own southern drawl, “so we really should go.”

 

With her warmest, fakest smile, Blue goes along with it. She must have remembered it, too. “Yeah, sorry. We need to be home for lunch, you know?”

 

“Ah yes, yes. The youth today, always in a hurry! No time to entertain an old man like me, but that’s fine, that’s fine.” The man smiles kindly, offering a wrinkled hand. Adam smiles back, surprised to find a genuine twitch of his lips. “We’ll meet again, I’m sure.”

 

The grip had been bruisingly painful, but Adam refuses to wince, instead holding his gaze until the old man turns a corner and disappears into another aisle. “That was weird,” he decides.

 

“No shit,” Blue shakes him off, reclaiming her arm with a glare, “I don’t think we should answer questions like that either. ” Adam nods. “The wrong person could be listening. Do you think– ”

 

“Maybe,” he agrees reluctantly. It’s too soon to tell, and jumping to conclusions is never a good thing. “Could be just paranoia.”

 

“He is so  _ old,”  _ she muses, “I’m not sure he has the strength to go about summoning demons.”

 

“Talk for yourself,” Adam scowls, cradling his hand, “he almost broke my hand.”

 

Blue snorts, but takes over driving the cart. In true college students fashion, they put it on the back of their minds and go on, not buying anything more than some instant noodles, pancake mix, and Blue’s yogurt. And when she pulls up Gansey’s credit card to pay, Adam lets her, saying  _ it was his stupid quest in the first place anyway.  _ She nods her agreement, and that’s that.

 

*

 

Arriving at the Barns, Blue and Adam don’t leave the car.

 

Instead, they sit in silence, watching with the apathy of two people who had to deal with both Ronan, Gansey, and Ronan-and-Gansey for a long time now and know better.  _ They know better,  _ Adam tells himself.

 

In front of them, Gansey and Ronan, covered in mud and feathers struggle to wrestle a garden hose into submission. It buckles wildly with the water pressure, spraying all over them, the front porch, and the hood of the car. Ronan swears loudly. Gansey is slapped in the face by the hose.

 

A few feet up in the air, Robobee flies frantically, no doubt recording the whole thing.

 

A beat. Another. Then, “I should just park in the back–”

 

“Yup, that would be better–”

 

*

 

After lunch Gansey and Blue disappear with Henry somewhere towards the orchards, laughing and talking, so Adam doesn’t worry. He looks up from where he’s sitting cross-legged on the couch and waves them off with a smile. His laptop is on his lap, and he’s just finished emailing his professors when his phone goes off.

 

_ “Adam Parrish, what the hell is going on?” _

 

“Hey, Kira.” Adam grins, setting the laptop aside and stretching his legs on the couch. Kira had been his first real friend in Yale, a quiet girl who had take in his strangeness, the vagueness of his stories, all the oddities, first with thoughtful consideration, then equally quiet acceptance. Cabeswater had lingered on Adam, and Kira had taken it in stride, no questions asked. She had dumped her books on his library table and announced they would be friends, offering a Tupperware full of cookies as bribery. That had been on his second year; she hadn’t been wrong then, and ever since Adam has found she rarely is. Now, he’s only mildly bewildered at hearing her voice. “What do you mean?”

 

_ “I mean,”  _ she says, and he can hear the frown on her voice,  _ “it’s Sunday and you missed Saturday Night Movies. You don’t miss Saturday Night Movies. Saturday Night Movies is sacred. Do you want chaos? Do you want society to collapse?” _

 

“Shit,  _ shit.  _ Sorry, it’s just– you would not believe the weekend I’m having.” He laughs, “seriously. It’s. I don’t even know where to start.”

 

There is silence on the other end of the line, then.  _ “I heard you were back in Henrietta. Family emergency.” _

 

Right. The email. Concern and worry bleed through his cell phone like honey, and Adam realizes how it must sound for her, who only knows about the bad parts of Henrietta. When Adam had written  _ family,  _ he had meant  _ Ronan and Gansey and Blue and Henry.  _ When Kira had read it, she had read  _ father and mother and blood.  _ “No, no, that’s not. I mean, it is a family emergency, but not  _ that  _ family.  _ A real  _ family.”

 

_ “You lost me.” _

 

He sighs. “Is this a good time to disclose the fact I have a boyfriend back here?”

 

_ “You what now? Oh my god, Adam Parrish, you dog! Why didn’t you tell us?”  _ She laughs gleefully,  _ “wait until Alice hears this, she owes me thirty bucks by now! I’m charging with interest, you know?” _

 

“You bet on my relationship status?” At this point, he’s not even surprised anymore, especially considering he’s put money on more than one of their bets. “Should I be offended? I think I should be offended.”

 

_ “Among other things, and don’t think you’re escaping this conversation, mister. But.”  _ Her laughter dies down, and her voice softens impossibly; she’s back to the shy girl with the homemade cookies, not the bubbly woman with a fierce smile.  _ “You’re okay, right? Because Alice and I, we can be in the next flight to Virginia, no questions asked.” _

 

_ No questions asked.  _ Adam shakes his head, even though she can’t see it. Maybe that’s why their friendship works so well. Kira understands there are things Adam can’t tell her, and Adam understands there are things Kira isn’t ready to tell him either. They work around their secrets, offering unwavering support without prying. 

 

“Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry for disappearing, but my friends sort of kidnapped me on the way to the dorms Friday.”

 

_ “Oh my god, don’t even get me started on Friday, you asshole. You ditched us on Alice’s birthday! You better get your ass here soon to eat your slice of cake. I baked it myself, so there weren’t any fire alarm incidents this time.”  _ Kira huffs,  _ “but I suppose I can’t really complain about friend-napping. Especially with the high-school sweetheart situation. Way to derail my angry speech.” _

 

Adam blushes but doesn’t correct her. He’s not sure if she’s wrong, and well. Kira rarely is. “I’ll be back on a couple of days, don’t worry, you can yell at me in person then. Question, how did you get to the email so fast?”

 

_ “What, like it’s hard?” _

 

“You know, the Legally Blonde references got old around a year and a half ago.”

 

_ “Hush, you heathen. Legally Blonde never gets old, how can you call yourself a lawyer after this?” _

 

“ _ Goodbye, Kira,” _ he says loudly, talking over her complaints. “I’m hanging up now. See you in a few days. Please, water my plants?”

 

_ “The things I do for this friendship. Come back soon, Alice says you have to sit through a High School Musical marathon for missing Saturday Night Movies.” _

 

He hangs up to the sound of clattering and cabinets being slammed in the kitchen. On the floor, his laptop stares at him, as if daring him to ignore the essay he just promised to email his professor by the end of the day or the impossible amount of reading he needs to do until Wednesday. If he’s back by Wednesday, that’s still up in the air.

 

Adam can’t afford distractions, but– 

 

He follows the noise to the kitchen.

 

Ronan is there, slamming cupboards and pretending to look for something. He raises one eyebrow when Adam enters the room, scowl impressively darkening a notch, before resuming the noise-making. A glass is slammed on the table, miraculously not cracking. The refrigerator is open, a glass jug of orange juice is carefully set beside it. The refrigerator door is slammed closed. Ronan pauses, looks up at Adam, rolls his eyes, then slams another glass. 

 

“Are you done?” Adam asks after a second of Ronan glaring at the juice, as if it personally offended him. “Hm. You can ask, you know.”

 

“The fuck would I ask?” He scoffs, as if he hadn’t been sulking in the kitchen all this time. Adam waits, confident Ronan will crack eventually. Both glasses are filled, and he pushes one in Adam’s direction. 

 

Chainsaw flies in through the window, landing on the counter. She tilts her head, curiously, looking from Ronan to Adam, back and forth. Then, probably sensing the tension, she caws quietly before taking off again, this time towards the orchards. 

 

Minutes tick by. The clock by the wall makes it abundantly clear, annoyingly loud in the silent kitchen. Because here’s the thing, Ronan will probably crack if left alone to stew, but Adam underestimated how long it will take. They might still be stuck on a standstill by dinner time, by Wednesday even.

 

Adam is patient for most things, but this isn’t something he wants to waste time in.

 

“Will you just ask so we can be done with it?” He says, eyeing warily the clock hands move mechanically and methodically. 

 

Ronan looks as if he might deny again, but in the end, decides to accept the olive branch. “So. She seems  _ nice _ ,” he settles on, spitting out  _ nice  _ like a particularly bitter aftertaste on his tongue, “sounded like she knew a lot about you.”

 

“She is. Kira is very nice and we’ve known each other for almost two years now.” Adam says, amusement and irritation balancing precariously on his chest– it could tip either way, really, “she was upset I missed our weekly movie night.” He watches as Ronan goes back to scowling at his glass, lets him be for another second before adding, “her girlfriend is very nice, too. She didn’t mention it on the call, so I suppose Alice might have been around, but she’s mostly upset, I think, because I promised I’d help her go ring shopping this week.”

 

“Oh,” Ronan deflates, folding himself in one of the chairs and downing his orange juice like a vodka shot. He winces after like one, too. “Ring shopping.”

 

“It’s going to be a Spring wedding, I think, but they want to wait until Law School is over.” He offers mildly.

 

Adam sips his juice, swallows half of the glass, then leaves it on the table as he walks around it, stopping in front of his idiot boyfriend.  _ Boyfriend.  _ “Hey,” he nudges his leg until Ronan looks up at him, twisting sideways so Adam can stand between his legs. “Have a little more faith in me, will you?”

 

“It’s not that I don’t.” He stops himself. Adam rests his hands on his shoulder, curls one on the back of his neck, thumb absently rubbing circles behind his ear. Ronan leans on the touch, closes his eyes, exhales slowly. When he opens them, they’re just as startling blue as Adam expects, but they still take his breath away. Now, there’s something vulnerable and raw behind the blue; it makes his heart ache painfully. When he speaks, it sounds a little like defeat.  _ “It’s been three years.” _

 

_ Things could have changed,  _ he doesn’t say, but Adam hears anyway,  _ things did change.  _ Adam knows his hands are rough from work, but he still cradles Ronan’s face as gently as he can, leaning down to kiss him. Hands fly to his waist, tugging him closer, and Adam kisses him slowly, unhurried, a  _ we have time  _ of a kiss. The words rattle around his ribcage, waiting to be breathed into existence, and he thinks maybe, if he could get them out in the open, there might be space in his lungs for oxygen.

 

“I’m here now,” he whispers against his lips, “I never wanted to leave, but I’m here now.” And he means it like he’s never meant anything else. If there’s one absolute truth in the universe, it would be this: Adam is staying.

 

_ Unguibus et rostro. _

 

“We should slow down,” Adam says and feels Ronan stiffen under his hands, immediately letting go as if burned. “Hey,” Adam catches his wrists, brings them back to his waist and under his shirt, tilts his chin up again so he can see the truth in Adam’s eyes, feel them on his skin.  _ If you don’t believe words, believe this.  _ “I said slow down, not hit the brakes. I just think we should talk, don’t you?”

 

Because when Ronan said  _ it’s been three years,  _ he had meant  _ I don’t know where we stand,  _ too.

 

And Adam– he doesn’t know either. Because the Barns are different. They’re an ecosystem of their own, and with their impossible dreamlike quality, surrounded by impossible dream things, it’s easy to let it be, to kiss and hold and feel, and not to worry.

 

Because sometimes the year after Glendower feels like yesterday, and sometimes it feels like a lifetime ago. Sometimes those three years stretch into decades, and sometimes they compress into the span of a blink of an eye. His memories are all there, within his reach, but they’re still settling, still sliding into place, still crystalizing into something real, and time isn’t a linear thing.

 

Neither is healing, he supposes.

 

“Now?” Ronan asks, eyes searching Adam’s face. Whatever it is, he must find, and the storm gathering on his expression flashes dangerous lightning only once more before clearing. The sun hides behind his teeth, and the smile that peaks through is all heat and sunlit promises. 

 

Adam grins, diving down for another kiss, and it feels like swallowing up stars. “Later,” he says, “we have time.”

 

*

 

Cabeswater is trying to get his attention.

 

It’s been trying since this morning when Adam had been brushing his teeth, and looked at the mirror out of the corner of his eyes and saw a flash of hollow eyes staring unblinkingly at him. 

 

After that, it refused to fall on the background of things.

 

Vines had curled around the kitchen window during breakfast, almost invading the house but not quite. Apparently, semi-sentient forest can learn a thing or two about boundaries after being threatened with arson by more than one people, go figure.

 

A raven, slightly bigger than Chainsaw and a lot wilder-looking had followed the car as he drove Blue around Henrietta. It had been waiting for them, restlessly ruffling its feathers every time they exited a store, only to take flight when they got close enough to glimpse its third eye.

 

But Adam refuses to answer the call. 

 

This isn’t the same Cabeswater he had made a deal with. His hands are his own, and so are his eyes. He won’t lend them for free, not after what it did. So he refuses to scry, and he refuses to so much as touch his cards.

 

There’s still the threat of the demon out there, waiting and growing and skittering the edges of reality, Adam knows. He doesn’t need a reminder every half an hour. None of them do, so after the third time he catches movements at the corner of his eyes and blurred figures shimmer away when he turns to look, he sighs.

 

Locking the bathroom door, he stares at the mirror. His reflection stares back, but it’s slightly out of focus, and when he moves, there’s a delay. “Not today,” Adam tells it, fiercely and sure, “I know there are things to do, but not today.”

 

In the silence, a vine taps the window, growing around the glass. 

 

“Look,” he closes his eyes, exhaling tiredly and then breathing in deeply. “I need today for me. For all of us. So let’s compromise. Tomorrow we’ll start looking.”

 

Nothing. A single drop falls from the faucet to the sink. 

 

“ _ Cras,”  _ Adam says and exits the bathroom.  _ Tomorrow. _

 

The latin rolls easily off his tongue, with none of the usual clumsiness and hesitation, and in the stillness of Sunday afternoons, it sounds wonderfully like a promise.

 

*

 

Nightfall brings Adam to another fork in the road.

 

He’s the last one awake, the Barns are quiet and lights turn on and off on their own as he walks down the hallway. Anywhere else in the world, it would be creepy. Here, it’s pretty like every other dream.

 

Adam has a room to sleep. It’s Matthew’s old room and it’s halfway bare like every boarding school student’s room that long left for college. And there’s nothing wrong with the room, but.

 

Well.

 

Last night– 

 

Fine, there had been extenuating circumstances last night. But before,  _ before,  _ Adam always slept at Ronan’s room and– 

 

_ He doesn’t want to assume. _

 

_ God _ , he sounds like Gansey. This is bad. Blue would probably kick him in the shins.

 

Sighing, Adam makes a snap-quick decision. He’s a man of action, he’s not a man of avoiding issues. He tiptoes back downstairs, sneaking into the kitchen as quiet as possible, wincing every time he steps on a loose tile or bumps into something.  _ Jesus,  _ has he always been this clumsy?

 

Soon enough, he’s back at the end of the stairs, standing on the hall. He turns right this time, towards Ronan’s room, a mug of hot chocolate on his hands. The porcelain is almost unbearably hot against his fingertips and sweet-smelling steam curls on the air.

 

He knocks on the door, and it swings open with a quiet creak.

 

On the bed, Ronan is sitting against the headboard, laptop on his lap and earbuds plugged in. The faint light from the screen, flickering through colors, gives him an ethereal glow, reflecting off his eyes and highlighting the sharp line of his jaw. 

 

Heart hammering on his chest, Adam can’t breathe. 

 

But then, Ronan blinks, noticing Adam on the doorway, and grins like he’d been waiting for Adam and  _ what took him so long?  _ Impossibly, Adam loses his breath all over again. Wordlessly, he offers Ronan the mugs, a terribly inadequate proof of devotion.

 

Still, when Ronan accepts it with a reverent kind of joy, careful and hesitant, Adam feels his heart restarting on his ribcage. The corner of the blanket is lifted, and he slips under the covers, curling around Ronan. “What are you watching?” Adam asks quietly, unwilling to shatter the peaceful silence. 

 

Ronan grins sharply. “Ghostbusters, the original.”

 

Adam can’t help snorting, because yes, this is a very Ronan-like thing to do and he should’ve been expecting it. “Really?”

 

“It seemed fitting, all things considered.”

 

“You’re ridiculous,” Adam tells him, privately thankful. “Is it the one with the giant marshmallow man?”

 

“Dude,  _ spoilers!” _

 

_ Absolutely ridiculous,  _ Adam thinks. “Shut up,” he says.

 

They watch the movie wrapped in a warm, soft kind of silence, a fuzzy blanket of a silence. And Adam is almost dozing off, watching as the green ghost cackles on the screen, when Ronan nudges him lightly with his elbow. “You okay?”

 

“Yeah,” he blinks, fighting off drowsiness even as his words come out drawled out slow. “Why?”

 

Ronan hums thoughtfully, quietly enough that maybe it wasn’t meant for Adam’s ears. “It’s been a fucked up couple of days.”

 

Adam sits up a little, feeling more awake, and nods. “It’s been a fucked up couple of days for everyone.”

 

“We’re not the ones who remembered jack shit about all this.”

 

_ All this  _ is a vague way of saying it. It might mean Henrietta, or Glendower and Cabeswater, or their friends, or  _ this.  _ It might mean all of the above, too, but Adam doesn’t think the distinction would make it any better. He heaves in a shuddery breath, something wet rattling on his chest, and closes his eyes to the soft glow of the laptop screen. “Well, maybe not for this long, no. Doesn’t mean it’s not fucked up, too.”

 

There’s a shift on the bed and Adam feels gravity pulling his body down until his head is resting on Ronan’s chest, fingers carding through his hair; a full circle since this morning. He feels the rumbling of Ronan’s words as he speaks again. “Doesn’t mean you have to be okay, either.”

 

“I could say the same for you,” Adam says softly, picking at a loose thread on the blanket. They should probably put the movie on pause, before they miss it entirely, because he knows for a fact Ronan won’t want to miss the giant marshmallow man destroying New York– it’s the kind of ridiculous, nonsensical kind of thing he’d enjoy watching.

 

“I’ve had the time to go through the five stages already, thanks,” Ronan shrugs carefully, but something on his voice catches at the back of his throat. “It’s not like Cabeswater could make me forget  _ everything,  _ after all. I mean, I’m still living here and taking things out of my dreams, for fuck’s sake.”

 

“What  _ did  _ it make you forget?”

 

Adam feels the way Ronan slouches, curling over Adam, as if reassuring himself that  _ yes, this is real, they are here,  _ and his heart shatters. Ronan presses a kiss to his hair before shrugging again. “Small stuff, mostly. The demon, almost dying. The black eating away at Cabeswater.” 

 

_ “Small stuff?”  _ A lone firefly flies in through the open window, and Adam watches it looping in the air, around the bedpost and zigzagging under the ceiling fan. It blinks yellow light, on and off, on and off, before diving back towards the open fields. Adam thinks of the way Ronan always has at least one of them on his line of sight, even back at the hotel, the balcony had been open with Henry’s rental on the parking lot in clear view. Then, he thinks of Ronan, left alone on Henrietta with the knowledge that all of his friends had forgotten him, having to pick up his life on his own, taking care of the Barns and Opal on his own.  _ It’s not fair,  _ he thinks,  _ not after everything. _

 

But then again, life is hardly fair.

 

“Hey,” Ronan shakes him gently, drawing Adam from his thoughts. “It’s fine. I mean,  _ obviously,  _ it’s not fine, but fuck it. I’m done being angry about it. Personal growth, you know?”

 

Adam snorts, he can’t help it, even as he agrees, because this is all so far from fine, but Ronan’s  _ fuck it  _ attitude is both so very Ronan and so very unlike him, that he can’t stifle the flare of amusement that shoots through him. 

 

“ _ But,”  _ Ronan continues, “it’s okay if you are. Angry, that is.”

 

“I’m not angry, I’m furious,” Adam deadpans. It’s easier if he puts a lid on the raging storm that is his feelings towards this, if he pretends there are only clear skies for now. “Did you know, Friday, I was kind of having a breakdown over drinking?”

 

“Yeah,” Ronan says dryly, “it was kind of noticeable.”

 

“Jerk,” he rolls his eyes, half-hearted at best. “What I mean is, it was pointless. I was there, working myself up over it, when I had already done it. Remember? At Monmouth, the day after graduation. We brought Gansey’s shitty air mattress to the living room and Blue made a pillow fort out of the couch’s cushions. We stayed up all night watching Lord of the Rings because for some godforsaken reason none of you had seen it before, you asked if I wanted a beer and I said yes, Henry burned the popcorn, I got tipsy, and the world didn’t end.” Adam exhales harshly, then shakes his head, clearing the memories from his vision.

 

Ronan stays silent, and Adam is grateful for the chance to quiet his heart down, to steer himself back to shore. It’s pointless, yes, in the sense that things don’t have to happen only once and trauma doesn’t have an expiration date, but going through the same motions twice when it could have been avoidable and Adam would have been  _ fine  _ is pointless.

 

“It was a shitty drink, anyway.” Ronan offers, probably sensing this is all Adam is willing to talk about it for now. 

 

“It was.” Adam nods, feeling tension seeping from his shoulders, “Cabeswater is such a jerk.”

 

“The worst,” he agrees solemnly before retrieving the laptop from where it had tipped almost out of the bed. The movie is paused, Netflix’s logo bouncing from corner to corner of the screen. “Now, come on, enough serious talk. I want to see the giant marshmallow man destroy New York.”

 

Sinking further in the warmth, Adam lets himself relax. He sighs contentedly, steadying the laptop on top of the covers and putting an earbud on. The last thing his mind registers is white goo covering streets and Ronan snorting quietly behind him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi, okay, so not last chapter, yay? This fic is growing slightly out of control, send help
> 
> <3


	6. dulce bellum inexpertis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the other shoe drops.

Tomorrow comes with little fanfare and a lot sooner than Adam expects. There’s no rolling of thunder or dark clouds looming in the distance. 

 

_ Tomorrow _ becomes _ today _ with soft yellow sunlight spilling from half-drawn curtains, stretching lazily under blankets, another warm body beside his on the bed.

 

“No sleepwalking this time,” Ronan notes a bit smugly when he notices Adam’s eyes open. He’s sitting up against the headboard, texting someone on his phone– that must be about Opal, Adam can’t think of anyone else Ronan would make an exception to his  _ it-would-kill-me-if-I-pick-up-the-phone  _ rule.

 

“No sleepwalking this time,” Adam agrees, voice still hoarse from sleep, and smiles, shuffling closer. “How long have you been awake?”

 

Ronan pauses, squinting thoughtfully at the digital clock on the bedside table, nevermind the perfectly functioning phone on his hands. “An hour, maybe?” He opens a drawer, pulling something pink and silver out of it, passes it to Adam. “Dreamed that for Sargent. She said her old one went blunt.” His smile is all teeth and full of sharp glee. “This one won’t have that problem.”

 

The switchblade looks just like Blue’s old one, maybe a little more colorful, the pink a bit brighter, the metal shining in the morning light. Adam pokes the tip of the blade with his finger, and okay, it’s definitely sharp, alright. “This is surprisingly nice of you. I’m afraid your asshole act is beginning to crack.”

 

“Shut the fuck up, Parrish,” Ronan scowls when Adam snickers, taking the switchblade from his hands and dropping it carelessly back on the drawer as if that would make it any better. Then, his scowl turns into a smirk that spells even more trouble. “You better take that back.”

 

Adam scoffs, not one for backing down from a challenge, raising one eyebrow, “or what?”

 

Ronan dives for him without warning, and Adam rolls out of bed, stumbling at the sheets tanged on his legs and makes for the door, laughing, but strong arms lock around his waist, dragging him back to the mattress. They wrestle, and for a moment, Adam thinks he might have a chance of winning, but Ronan cheats, skimming his fingers across Adam’s ribs, where he  _ knows _ Adam is stupidly ticklish until he’s shrieking with laughter.

 

Ronan pins him down, smirking victoriously down at Adam. “Ready to give up?”

 

Adam grins, “never.”

 

*

 

“If the three of you don’t shut up,” Ronan threatens, “I’m going to turn this car around.”

 

It’s not the first threat, and it’s not the first warning, so the three people sitting squeezed together in the back seat keep chatting good-naturedly as if not hearing it. Apparently, Henry has a lot of opinions on an assortment of issues, and Blue is beyond happy egging him on.  _ Narwhals,  _ she had said as soon as Ronan had revved the engine, driving away with a surprisingly tame velocity,  _ discuss.  _ And so Henry did, not missing a beat. Gansey, not so surprisingly, had been enabling them for the past ten minutes, content to listen to their arguing over some weird horned whale and asking idle questions at randomly appropriated times. 

 

“No, really, it’s the unicorn of the sea,” Henry is saying, mischief glinting on his eyes, “I know that’s not a horn, but it’s the sentiment that matters.”

 

“Yeah, you guys,” Adam twists on the passenger seat to look at the back, knowing his amusement must be bleeding through and not bothering to hide his smile, “he’s going to turn the car around.”

 

They all laugh on the back seat falling on each other like little planets orbiting the same sun, and Ronan throws him an unimpressed glare, turning up the radio until his shitty electronic music drowns out everything else. Adam shrugs, grinning unrepentantly.

 

He leans back into his seat, gazing down at the map on his lap. He had been trying to figure out a shortcut to the new Cabeswater, a trail less hidden by thorn bushes and less likely to turn them around if they’re not paying attention, but the cold, static buzzing under his fingertips tells him it will be no use, at least not today.

 

Ronan eyes him thoughtfully. “You done?”

 

Folding the map in clean, neat squares, Adam gives up. “For now,” then, he catches the way Ronan’s eyes flicker to the road ahead and back to the speedometer on the dashboard, a familiar gleam shining brightly back at him. “Ronan,  _ no,”  _ he tries.

 

“Ronan, yes.” His grin is absolutely wolfish, and Adam resigns himself to check his seatbelt while ignoring the traitorously excited thrill running down his spine.

 

“Please, click your seatbelts on,” Adam catches Gansey’s eyes on the rearview mirror, and continues on the flattest voice he can manage, “and keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times.”

 

There’s a chorus of  _ no _ from the backseat in unison, rising above the music. The faint drowned out sound of Ronan’s snort. 

 

Then, the bass drops and the world lurches forward.

 

Adam grips the armrest tightly, fingers going painfully white, and lets physics press him back to the seat. Still, he feels a breathless smile stretching across his lips, and when he turns to look at his left, Ronan has a savagely happy smirk on his face. An equally breathless burst of laughter bubbles out of Adam, spilling on the space between the two seats. It sits quietly somewhere near the gear stick, lingering even as Ronan effortlessly shifts from one gear to the next.

 

Blue is complaining about something; her life, maybe, or rather, the threat to it. Henry is grinning sharply, a reckless sort of grin that makes Adam wonder how are things in level, conventional Harvard. Gansey is resigned and nauseated all in one expression; he might throw up or he might choke on his self-righteousness, it could go either way, Adam figures.

 

The fields between the Barns and Henrietta are empty, just like the roads connecting them. They are as much of a pocket universe as the Barns itself, and outside the window, they blur in a shapeless brush of yellow and green and blue. 

 

It’s barely over the speed limit, not anywhere near what this BMW is capable of, but Ronan wouldn’t dare, not with so many people inside, not if they don’t want him to. But compared to Gansey, who drives like he usually does everything– with the soul of an old man and all its mannerisms– or Adam, whose piece of shit car would fall apart on anything above forty miles, it’s nearly riding lightning.

 

For a while, it’s just this. The adrenaline burning up on his veins, the heavy drums of the radio, Ronan pressing down on the gas, the background laughter on the backseat.

 

Something flashes from the left.

 

Ronan swears. Tires screech impossibly loud against the dusty, dirty, dry Henrietta road. The BMW swerves. The world lurches sideways. The scenery comes sharply into focus.

 

“Jesus Christ,” Ronan is gripping the steering wheel, staring blankly ahead. Abruptly, he punches the radio off. The car falls into a silence. Then, “are you okay?”

 

The question is directed at Adam. Adam takes stock of himself– heart hammering against his ribcage, breath too fast, too shallow, he can’t pry his fingers away from the armrest. “Yes. You?”

 

“Yeah. Gansey?”

 

“I’m fine.” A beat, “I think I’m going to throw up.”

 

It sets off a flurry of motion. Gansey throws open his door, stumbles out, reaching midway to the fence before doubling over and dry heaving. Blue and Henry scramble after him, holding him up and steady on the side of the road. 

 

Ronan follows them at a slower pace, guilt weighing down his steps.

 

But that’s not what catches Adam’s attention. Well, it does, but something more pressing demands his focus.

 

When he can finally detach himself from his seat, Adam exits the car, slamming the door behind him. He can hear the hissed arguing happening on the other side, Blue growing more and sharper while Ronan grows more and blunter.

 

But– 

 

Adam keeps walking, leaves them to sort themselves out. He trusts them to sort themselves out without too much bloodshed.

 

And– 

 

A few feet away, lying on the middle of the road, is the reason they almost crashed.

 

It’s a dead deer. Or, at least, Adam thinks it is, at first. Something’s not right, there’s something– he leans down to take a better look.  

 

“ _ Fuck, _ ” he breathes out, wanting to step back, to go back to the car,  _ to go back _ ; instead, he stays rooted to the spot. Instead, he looks on. The blood is still oozing, more black than red, too black,  _ too black,  _ and it’s dangerously close to staining his sneakers. That’s not all that’s oozing from it, though. There’s a deep gash on the deer’s belly, and its guts spill on the dirt; maggots and flies and beetles crawl all over it and each other, burrowing on tender flesh and eating away skin and hair and muscle, the stench of rotting meat makes his stomach churn violently, desperately, suddenly, and the flies are buzzing incessantly by his ear–  _ left? Right? Both?–  _ and it’s echoing, echoing, echoing, on his brain. The sun scorching on his back isn’t helping either; it makes him too hot, too warm, too dizzy– 

 

A hand pushes him back and Adam hadn’t realized he had been swaying. Ronan hauls him up, frowning, frowning, frowning. “Shit, Parrish,” he pulls Adam away, tugs him until his back knocks against Ronan’s chest, “how about you don’t fall face first on the roadkill.”

 

It’s posed like a question but the end of it doesn’t lift and it falls into something like a statement. A suggestion. Adam whips his head around, too fast for the fading dizziness, “that’s not– you saw it, too, right? It didn’t. It wasn’t– did you hit it?”

 

Ronan winces, the hand on Adam’s arm twitches. “No.  _ No.  _ I swerved in time, but.  _ It jumped in front of the car.” _

 

Light footsteps join them. Blue gasps at the sight, her hand flying to her mouth. “Holy shit. I didn’t think we actually hit anything–  _ wait,”  _ she takes a step closer and her hands don’t shake as she lowers it from her face. “That’s an Irish Elk. They’re extinct, this isn’t possible–  _ oh,”  _ a light bulb sort of sound, “like in that cave, remember?”

 

Adam remembers.

 

“It sure didn’t look like that back then,” Ronan says, regarding the carcass dubiously, “ _ damn _ . How did it  _ jump in front of the car?” _

 

“That’s impossible,” Blue shakes her head, in her  _ you are being very unreasonable right now  _ kind of way. “Too decomposed. I’d say at least a few days old. Look, there are maggots already.”

 

There’s a joke there, and it’s too easy, and it’s so not the right time, so Adam glares at Ronan, stares him down because he knows that look on his eyes that says  _ it’s too easy,  _ looks pointedly until it grudgingly turns into  _ it was too easy anyway. _

 

“It wasn’t here yesterday,” Adam reminds her. 

 

“But– how? What the hell?”

 

“Well, it did jump. I don’t care for your impossibles, Sargent,” Ronan uncurls his hand from where it had still been gripping Adam’s arm, crosses his own over his chest, “zombie deer over here came out of no-fucking-where.”

 

Of course Ronan thought that. He’s an impossibility all on his own.  _ Impossible, _ Adam sighs, running a hand over his face, grits his teeth when his fingers shake all the way down. Then, because two sets of footsteps had begun to approach them, he calls behind his shoulder, “stay back, Gansey. You just finished throwing up.”

 

It’s a mistake. Blue zeroes in on him. “You’re mean. What’s going on?”

 

“I don’t know,” he says, and it’s the truth. He’s been feeling itchy, on edge, raw, since they left the Barns behind, but he can’t quite tell why. The blood isn’t anywhere near his sneakers since Ronan pulled him back, but a maggot is slowly crawling towards them. Crawling, crawling, crawling. It falls from the deer and into its shadow, and for a fleeting moment, Adam thinks it’s going to shrivel and die in the sun. It doesn’t. “The color is wrong,” he says instead, eyes fixed on the maggot. Crawling, crawling, crawling. “The blood, it’s wrong. It should be redder.”

 

“That’s very interesting,” Henry speaks, and Adam doesn’t know when Henry got there, but his voice is very strained and very thin and very strangled, “but perhaps more importantly, why is no one mentioning the fact that the deer is still alive?”

 

“It’s an elk,” Blue corrects automatically. “Shit.  _ Shit.  _ He’s right. Look,  _ look.” _

 

They look. The deer’s–  _ elk’s  _ eyes are blinking owlishly, sluggishly, slowly up at all of them. There are a slight rise and fall of its chest, shallow and sparse, barely a breathing of any sort. More muscle memory than anything.

 

“That’s even worse,” Ronan says, stepping closer, “ _ fuck.  _ Should we kill it?”

 

Blue makes a wounded noise, like she wants to protest, wants to say  _ no _ , but can’t argue. Not when the animal is rotting alive, being eaten bit by bit. A mercy kill is the closest to kindness they can offer right now.

 

_ “Memento mori,”  _ he tells no one in particular. The Latin words roll off his tongue easily, confidence making up for any clumsiness. That’s probably Ronan in a nutshell.

 

“I’m not touching it,” Adam announces quickly because he has no intention of getting anywhere close to it again. Uneasiness is still brewing on his stomach and he doesn’t trust himself not to be sick if the stench gets any stronger. It’s already too humid, too sickly sweet, too lingering as it is. He adds apologetically, “but we should probably put it out of its misery.”

 

“What is going on?” Gansey demands, face flushed on the late morning sun and irritation. His sweater is rumpled and sweat clings to his forehead; it’s probably the least composed Adam’s seen him since this Friday. He stops beside Henry, mouth twisting in a horrified grimace, “is it–  _ Jesus.” _

 

The elk seemed to have been waiting for Gansey, for them to be together– like it wanted the completed set: Gansey and Ronan and Adam and Blue and Henry. Its black eyes close, its ripped-open chest rises once in a shuddery breath, and just like that– it’s over. Blood stops oozing from the gaping wound, the flies and maggots and ants writhe in the decomposing flesh with renewed fervor.

 

“Well,” Henry is the one to break the silence, “this was disturbing.”

 

No one says anything in response. Disturbing doesn’t begin to cover it, really. There’s a sense of wrongness here, something old and wrinkled and malicious that grazes a claw-like finger to their throats, threatening to choke them if they make any sudden movements. 

 

“We can’t leave it here,” Blue says, sharp and practical and sensible, “in the middle of the road.” She looks pointedly at Gansey and his wringing hands, the only outright sign of his rising anxiety. Adam exchanges a look with Ronan, silently looking for confirmation, then nods at Blue. 

 

Leaving Henry to help Blue, they begin herding Gansey back to the car, as fast as possible but not unkindly. Adam wonders if Gansey’s affected like this because of his connection with Cabeswater, if he feels the same pinpricks of unease under his skin, if it’s worse for him. Gansey lets them guide him to the backseat, clicking his seatbelt on with fumbling fingers.

 

Adam folds himself in the passenger seat, carefully not glancing at the rearview mirror. At his side, Ronan is taking a cigarette out of his pack. He waves Adam off when Adam remembers the lighter still sitting on his pocket and offers it back, pulling out a box of matches from his jacket instead and lighting it with unsteady fingers.

 

When Blue and Henry come back, taking either side of Gansey again, no one says anything. Adam can see splatters of black on their hands. Blue is fiddling with her new pink switchblade again.

 

In the silence that follows, Ronan drives.

 

*

 

300, Fox Way is their first stop.

 

Blue breathes in deeply, then hops out of the BMW. There’s a new unspoken agreement that no one should be alone for too long now, not after the dead elk, so she leans inside, kisses Gansey on the cheek, gives him a stern look and waits for Henry to catch up to her before marching inside the house. 

 

“Hey, Sargent,” Ronan calls before Blue could disappear through the door. She stops, leaning against the porch railings, yelling  _ yeah?  _ “Tell Calla I asked where her flying monkeys are.”

 

_ “What–”  _ and then,  _ “your Magic of Oz references are getting old, shithead!” _

 

Gansey sighs heavily on the backseat, and Adam shoots him a sympathetic glance on the rearview mirror.

 

*

 

Adam is next.

 

They stop at the edge of the forest, as far as the terrain allows them to get by car. Cabeswater hums impatiently at the edge of his vision, a buzz of crickets too loud for this time of the year. 

 

“I don’t like it,” Ronan says, before Adam slips out of the door, “you’ll be alone.”

 

“I have to agree,” Gansey pipes in from the backseat, leaning between the front seats. “None of us should be alone right now. It isn’t safe.”

 

Adam waits. He unlocks his seatbelt, turns so he can glare at them. “I’d like to point out the hypocrisy of this coming from the two of you.” He snorts, “ _ it isn’t safe.  _ Really, Gansey?  _ Really?” _

 

Gansey sinks back to his seat, properly chastised and Adam feels a twinge of guilt, it isn’t Gansey’s fault that Adam is feeling stretched out thin. Ronan, on the other hand, glares right back at him. “You know it’s dangerous. You wouldn’t be insisting on Gansey following me around if it wasn’t.”

 

There’s a snappy remark sitting on the tip of his tongue, but Adam bites it back, swallows the acid down. “Look,” Adam says on his best diplomatic voice, “this is the safest place for me to be. Cabeswater needs me alive to fix the ley line, it will have to protect me.” He raises one eyebrow, daring them to say otherwise, “while you two will be out there in the open. If anything, you’re the ones in danger.” He pauses, considering his own words. “Actually, maybe I should go with you.”

 

Ronan snorts, rolling his eyes. “Get the fuck out of my car, Parrish.”

 

Adam laughs and Ronan scowls, unimpressed. But when Adam leans in to kiss him, he meets him halfway willingly. 

 

Outside the sun is bright, high on the sky in true southern weather. The forest casts tall shadows and it’s almost a relief to walk into the shade.

 

*

 

_ The ley line is a mess– _ that’s the first thing Adam notices.

 

_ The ley line is a mess because someone has been messing with it _ – is the thought that follows. 

 

He can feel it, the displaced energy pulsing underground and the buzzing of an electric current charging the air; a live wire crackling, charging, waiting to snap.

 

It shouldn’t be this wrong, this scattered, this misplaced. Someone must be trying to use it, channel its power, steal it away from the earth.

 

That’s always been the problem with Whelk, Adam thinks, at least where the ley line is concerned. Cabeswater has little opinion on the murder of an unknown boy like Noah had been back then for it. But Whelk wanted to collar it and put it on a leash, make it into something he could control.

 

Adam knows better. The thrumming of power that pulses through the ley line, the simmering well of possibilities that is Cabeswater, it’s too ancient, too large, too elemental, to ever be tamed. No, Cabeswater and the line, they aren’t quite the same, in the way two faces of a coin aren’t quite the same, but they’re both meant to be wild.

 

Feeling Cabeswater tugging at his strings, Adam lets it take over, guide him into painstakingly slowly fixing the ley line.  _ I am large, I contain multitudes,  _ he thinks wryly.

 

He lets his mind drift as he works, going over what they have so far, what they know, and what it means. Thinks over everything, shines a light on the cracks of his memories where past and present spill over each other, sorts through his truths like flashcards. He studies his situation because studying is what he does best and is what he always trusted to fix everything.

 

If anything, no one can say Adam Parrish isn’t consistent.

 

Sense of time has slipped him from the moment he stepped in the forest, so when Adam blinks and feels himself eased back into his body, he has no idea how long has passed. 

 

Knowing he’s done for the day and lingering here would be a waste of precious time, Adam pats himself down in search for his phone. Nothing. Flashes from the BMW swerving to avoid hitting the dead elk. His phone must have fallen from his pocket; it’s probably lost somewhere under the passenger seat.

 

Damn it. Well. They’re bound to come looking for him at some point, right?

 

Ronan will probably be done soon at the farmer’s market and whatever errands Gansey needed to run today. Adam looks up, squinting towards the gaps between trees, but it’s too dense to see the sky. There’s no way to tell the time.

 

With nothing else to do, Adam begins making the trek back to the edge of the woods.

 

*

 

By the time he makes it out of the forest and back to the dusty road, Adam can hear the telltale sounds of a car approaching. Except–

 

It’s not Ronan’s BMW.

 

Instead, a silver minivan rolls up to him, paint peeling off at places from being too long in the sun. Blue is the one driving, with Henry on the passenger seat and a pine-shaped air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror. She’s wearing Henry’s sunglasses, pushing them up to her hair when she stops in front of Adam. Blue looks at him, then around, then back at him. “Wait, where’s Ronan?”

 

Adam frowns, his stomach dropping down, down, down. “What do you mean? He went into town with Gansey.”

 

“Shit,” she swears, eyes widening, “Gansey called like, an hour ago. He lost Ronan in the crowd, hasn’t heard of him since. You weren’t answering your phone either, we figured he’d be with you.”

 

Right. Because while Ronan not answering his phone is nothing new, Adam usually does, unless he’s too distracted to bother.

 

“I don’t have my phone on me,” Adam says, hating how his voice breaks at the end, “and I haven’t seen him since they dropped me off here.”

 

_ “Shit,”  _ Blue swears again. Everything about her whitens, from her ashen face to her knuckles gripping the steering wheel. “Shit, shit,  _ shit.” _

 

From the passenger seat, Henry leans forward, face tight in a worried expression. “I just talked with Gansey. The BMW is still parked where they left it, but no sign of Ronan.”

 

Adam wrenches the minivans side door open and throws himself inside. Blue barely gives him time to slam it closed before she is violently turning the car around and pressing down the gas pedal. She swerves and changes lanes and honks and the speed limit is so far behind them Ronan would’ve been proud.

 

And that’s– Adam isn’t thinking about that. 

 

Because his blood is slowly turning into lead and worry is spreading like an oil spill over his bones. It’s growing and growing and growing, and Adam is drowning in fear because he can’t tune out the voice in his head telling him  _ it might be too late.  _ Because this is so, so,  _ so  _ ridiculous; Ronan is missing and Adam is here, sitting in a silver minivan with Blue in the driver seat going to pick up Gansey in the farmer’s market.

 

There’s a pine-shaped air freshener hanging on the rearview mirror swaying, swaying, swaying back and forth with the turns and curves and it must be expired, because Adam can’t smell pine, he  _ can’t, okay, so what’s the fucking point,  _ and it’s stupid, so stupid, Adam wants to rip it out from where it hangs uselessly and throw it out of the window.

 

“Adam?” Blue asks. She asks with the kind of voice that tells him it isn’t the first time she had to call his name. He might have answered her this time, though, because instead of repeating herself, she continues, “are you okay?”

 

And it’s such a  _ stupid  _ thing to ask, because  _ of course  _ Adam is okay, Adam isn’t the one missing. Adam is here, sitting on the stupid silver minivan with the stupid pine-shaped air freshener on the rearview mirror, perfectly okay, perfectly safe, perfectly fine. There’s no reason for  _ Adam  _ not to be okay, and– 

 

It’s funny, really, in a way that’s not funny at all, that Adam is too worried to be properly angry.

 

So before he answers her, he swallows the shards of all the words he wants to say but bites back, griding them between gritted teeth, tastes blood on his tongue, lets it drip down his throat. Then, “I’m fine.” Steady, short, to the point. “Just– drive, okay? I need– it’s not. Just drive.”

 

Blue makes a worried noise in the front seat. “It might be nothing, right?”

 

“Yeah,” Henry agrees, so stupidly hopeful that Adam’s skin crawls, “we shouldn’t jump to conclusions. We don’t have all the facts yet.”

 

That’s it. 

 

No.

 

He can’t do this now. 

 

_ He can’t–  _

 

“Does lying to yourself makes you feel better,” Adam snaps, his voice biting and sharp with all its jagged edges. “Or are you just  _ that  _ dense?”

 

“I know you’re worried,” Blue says, her own voice a cold steel, silvery and sharp, “so I’m letting this go. But you don’t get to be an asshole about this, Adam. We’re worried too, you know?”

 

He stays quiet, not trusting himself to reel back his words; Adam knows she’s right, and he does know they are all worried. Gansey must be going out of his mind with guilt and worry. But there’s nothing for him to do right now and the drive back to Henrietta is so, so stupidly long.

 

Restless and clinging to the shreds of his temper to keep from lashing out, Adam remains silent for the last of the ride.  _ Don’t fight with Blue,  _ he tells himself,  _ don’t fight with Gansey. _

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a little late, I know and I'm sorry!
> 
> but happy halloween!


	7. fores fortuna adiuvat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a search party is launched, being in your 20s does not mean you're a very good adult, and creepy rituals happen in creepy places.

As predicted, they find Gansey sitting on the curb in the middle of a breakdown.

 

It irritates Adam, who’s already on edge and coiled ready to snap, because it helps no one and brings them nowhere closer to a solution, so Henry gives Adam the passenger seat, choosing to stay in the back with Gansey.

 

For a while, they just sit in the car. 

 

“What happened?” Adam asks, careful to keep his voice flat, careful so that it doesn’t sound like  _ how could you lose him  _ because that’s not fair, he knows, “ _ Gansey, _ what happened?”

 

“I’m not sure,” Gansey says, a mess of ups and downs of a sentence, “we were just killing time, you know, waiting to pick up you guys, then this old man– I don’t even know, he said he was some teacher in Aglionby, which really should have been our first clue, honestly, where do they find so many psychopaths to hire?– right, this old man comes out of nowhere talking about car troubles and being new in town, so I was happy to point him to Boyd’s, you know? Or take him there, either way would work.” Gansey pauses, swallowing thickly, “but he said he had been on his way back to Aglionby, he had forgotten his wallet there so he couldn’t possibly go to a mechanic and didn’t we know anyone who could take a look at it just as an emergency?”

 

“I tried telling him Boyd would let him pay later, but he was getting so worked up and he was so old, we were worried he would get a heart attack over it. So, you know I’m useless with cars, really, completely helpless, you remember, right? So I told the old man that, but Ronan just– he just rolled his eyes and said he’d take a look at it, he’d been picking up a lot of stuff from tinkering with the BMW and he’s always been good with cars, better than me, anyway.”

 

“So he told me to stay with our things and–  _ oh _ . No, I forgot about the bags, we need to go back, Adam, we need to go back to the market, I forgot the bags, Ronan is going to kill me. Blue, we need–”

 

Henry murmurs something, too low for Adam to hear, but it seems to calm Gansey down again. He’s taking this hard, Adam realizes, maybe out of a lingering misguided sense of responsibility, maybe a side-effect of Cabeswater’s sacrifice years ago. Adam wonders, with the detachment of someone bordering hysteria, if Gansey is half forest now, too. But then, that hasn’t been the first time magic tinkered with his soul.

 

“No, it’s fine. I  _ am  _ fine. As I was saying, Ronan told me to stay put and then left with the old man,” Gansey continues, sounding less shell-shocked. “But he didn’t come back. I watched them turn the corner, and then– nothing. It’s been almost two hours. Normally, I wouldn’t worry too much, but.”

 

Gansey makes a helpless sort of shrug, a very  _ you know  _ and  _ what now  _ kind of gesture, and Adam privately agrees.  _ What now?  _

 

“Should we go back to the Barns?” Blue asks, hesitantly, glancing at Adam out of the corner of her eyes.

 

“Too far, takes too long,” he replies, clipped, “did they say anything at Fox Way?”  _ Anything useful,  _ he doesn’t add.

 

“Calla said we should be careful,” she tells them, “that something big is going to happen. Mom agrees, and also that we need to stick together if we want to make it out alive.”

 

Adam curls his hands into fists, but nods. It makes sense, Ronan went off alone and look where it got him.  _ No, not thinking about this.  _ His throat is tightening, his lungs are constricting painfully on his chest, and Adam tries to blink back black spots on his vision.

 

“We should go, then,” Gansey speaks softly but his voice carries unwavering, a command softened to a suggestion by the certainty they will follow him anyway. “Back to Fox Way, I mean.”

 

“Yeah,” Blue takes a deep breath, her fingers flexing on the steering wheel, “okay, I can do that. They will know  _ something.” _

 

Adam nods again. On the backseat, Gansey slumps back against Henry, talking with low voices. Blue turns on the engine, backs out of the parking spot. The air around them is heavy with frightening words they are all too worried to spill, and they pile heavily on the glaring empty seat.

 

*

 

“I can’t see him,” Adam speaks through gritted teeth. He’s been trying to scry since they burst through the door, scrambling after each other and not making any sense. But the psychics had been expecting them, Maura gently guiding Henry and Gansey to the kitchen to suffer through her teas and Calla not so gently ushering Adam and Blue to the reading room. “ _ I can’t find anything.” _

 

“I’m not surprised,” Calla says, drumming her nails on the tabletop, a constant  _ tap-tap-tap-tap  _ that grinds on his brain. “That would be just too easy, wouldn’t it?”

 

_ “Calla!” _

 

Blue sounds scandalized, but Calla isn’t wrong.  _ Tap-tap-tap-tap.  _ Everything to do with them has always been a clusterfuck.  _ Tap-tap-tap-tap.  _ Welsh kings and magical forests and sacrifices and demons.  _ Tap-tap-tap-tap.  _ They can’t expect this, of all things, to be straightforward. 

 

“Don’t get all snappy on me, Blue,” Calla waves her off. Her fingers stop. “I’m helping, see? Your mother and I, we have been researching. And by that, I mean trying to make sense out of that witch’s ramblings.”

 

“Gwenllian?” Adam blinks. Somehow, in the sudden silence, he had forgotten about her. A blessing, really. “Did she know anything?”

 

“I think so, it’s hard to tell,” she grimaces, and Adam musters up a sliver of sympathy for her. “But look, your little ring leader looks better already.”

 

The comment is followed by Gansey hesitantly waking in, Henry behind him. Calla is right, he looks more colorful, awake, human. “Are we interrupting?”  _ Did you find anything?  _ He means. Gansey looks at Adam, expecting him to hand him maybe not all the answers, but at least the first key.

 

“Nah,” Blue offers him a tired smile, one hand reaching out for him. Gansey goes easily, as if tugged by a private sort of gravity, made only for them. Henry, caught in their orbit, falls in place. “You’re just in time.”

 

“As I was saying,” Calla continues, “our resident crazy lady said someone is trying to bring your old pal back to life. And that there would be no need for a ritual this time.”

 

Gansey frowns. “Shouldn’t it be harder to summon a demon?”

 

“It should,” Maura answers, entering the room with brisk steps and handing everyone a cup of tea. “But it’s different, here.”

 

“The ley line,” Adam agrees. Earlier today he had felt the ripples of power echoing on the line through Cabeswater, buzzing impatiently under grass blades. “It was powerful enough to bring Gansey back.”

 

“But that took Cabeswater sacrificing itself,” Blue frowns too, and sitting beside Gansey, their expressions match. Then, horror dances on her face like a funeral march. “Oh no. Do you think– is that why– oh no. |He can’t be thinking of sacrificing  _ Ronan,  _ right?”

 

“It would make sense, wouldn’t it?” Calla says, and her voice is genuinely sad for the first time since Persephone. “That boy is as tied to the ley line as they come, even more than Coca-cola shirt over here.”

 

“Blood magic with magic blood, no wonder there will be no need for a proper ritual.”

 

“But! He can’t do that– we need to find Ronan first, we can’t let–”

 

The discussion goes on around him, but Adam isn’t paying attention anymore. His mind is stuck repeating  _ sacrifice sacrifice sacrifice  _ over and over, and it’s echoing along Gwenwillian’s words  _ what will you sacrifice this time?  _

 

If only he hadn’t–

 

Maybe if–

 

Then this wouldn’t–

 

He shakes his head, resting it on his hands, elbows on his knees. Adam feels his breath hitch. Feels the cold spreading all over his body, knows his fingers would shake if he were to untangle them from his hair. 

 

There are so many things wrong right now, he doesn’t know where to start. It doesn’t feel real,  _ how can it be real?  _ When just this morning they had been happy, curled around each other, and Ronan had been there, alive, alive,  _ alive.  _

 

This isn’t–

 

_ Playing martyr doesn’t suit you,  _ Adam thinks instead, saves the words for when he sees Ronan again.

 

Because Ronan isn’t dead yet. Adam would know,  _ he would know,  _ not because he’s stupidly in love and delusional Disney bullshit, no, he would know because that would mean the makeshift ritual would be complete and  _ that  _ would fuck up something in the ley line. Adam would know, he would  _ feel.  _

 

There’s hope in that.

 

There’s not much else, but there’s hope yet.

 

*

 

“Okay,” Gansey says, looking tired and stretched thin, dark stains beneath his eyes and glasses hanging crookedly on his nose. Still, his voice is a steady warmth when he speaks, “what do we know?”

 

A client had arrived a few minutes ago and because the world doesn’t stop spinning just because they’re in the middle of yet another life-threatening crisis and there’s nothing concrete to do right now, Maura and Calla had kicked them out of the reading room and into the kitchen. 

 

“I can’t find them anywhere in Henrietta,” Adam replies, hands curled around a mug of coffee because they can’t shake if he’s holding something, “Blue, you said Neeve couldn’t see into Cabeswater either, right?”  _ I’m not the problem, right?  _ “So they must be somewhere in the ley line, somewhere hidden like Cabeswater.”

 

“Which would make sense, wouldn’t it?” Henry muses. He’s sitting at the table, eyes fixed somewhere in the wall behind Adam and every muscle of his body seems tense; Robobee is flying around Henrietta looking for anything relevant, and Henry looks like he’d rather be out there, too. “Closer to the source of power, greater the chance to succeed, right?”

 

Adam nods mutely. He doesn’t have to say the ley line stretches across miles and miles and miles, to the infinity and beyond. It would take too long to find the right place on their own, and Cabeswater is uncharacteristically quiet.

 

“Neeve said, too,” Blue begins hesitantly as if saying her name might summon her aunt, or maybe as if heeding her advice might mean betraying something vital for her. It might, Neeve has never been exactly a saint, her advice might as well be a deal with, well, not the devil himself, but maybe a lesser demon. “Well, she said once that these things, rituals and spells and all, they work better in consecrated ground.”

 

“That’s very Christian-oriented,” Gansey frowns behind his glasses, a very scholarly look glinting off his eyes and catching on his sweater, “considering all the magic involved, I mean.”

 

“No, obviously, it’s not really about the religion thing. It doesn’t have to be about Catholicism in specific,” she huffs, struggling to find the right words. For half a second Adam wishes they still had that translating box. Maybe it would make more sense in another language, maybe Blue would find it easier in the tree language. “it’s more about the… belief. The  _ intent.” _

 

_ Intent.  _ Adam mulls it over, rolling the words on his tongue. It tastes bitter, like bile and it tastes metallic, like blood. He thinks of candlelight and dusty pews, “so would St. Agnes work?”

 

“Theoretically? Yes, all churches are holy ground,” Blue shrugs one shoulder, helpless in a way she must hate, “but that’s not on the ley line.”

 

“Places with any relics,” Henry adds, eyes flitting quickly through articles on his phone, “or any buried saints, too. Has there ever been a miracle and–or a revelation here? ”

 

Gansey shakes his head, only once, only enough to convey how badly this is going, and takes off his glasses to clean them on his shirt. “There’s nothing like this on Henrietta, I would’ve heard of it before. Besides, most of the line lies in the forest. No churches are built on there.”

 

“What about pagan religions?” Adam suggests half-heartedly. It’s hard to think of anything at all while his grasp on sanity slips from his fingers. He’s keeping it together for now, because he has to, because Ronan needs him to, but duct tape and stale glue can only hold it for so long. 

 

Gansey shakes his head again, and it’s painfully clear he’s trying very hard not to show how much this is affecting him. No one knows Henrietta quite like Richard Campbell Gansey III, who researched this town from inside and out, wholeheartedly, obsessively, relentlessly.

 

“We are overthinking this,” Henry says, setting his phone on the table carefully. The sound still echoes too loud in the too small kitchen. “Anywhere at least one truly faithful Catholic was buried would be considered consecrated ground, would it not?”

 

Blue and Gansey nod in tandem. It would be creepy if they hadn’t known creepier things in the dark.

 

Henry levels them with a baffled glare.“Are you telling me that, in a small town in the middle of Nowhere, Virginia, there isn’t  _ one good Catholic buried here?” _

 

“The town’s cemetery isn’t on the ley line,” Gansey explains patiently. Or maybe just tiredly, it’s getting harder to know the difference. “It’s also too public for something like this. Someone would surely have called the police by now.”

 

They all glance at the window, taking in the last lights of the day. Soon,  _ too soon _ , it would be night, irrefutable proof that time is ticking, ticking, ticking– always forward. Outside, crickets hiss steadily, the leaves rustle, the cicadas wail.

 

Suddenly, Blue jumps up, her chair toppling over behind her. She pays it no mind, “ _ the churchyard!” _

 

“What, Jane–”

 

“There’s an old church, just outside Henrietta– in the woods, by the hills!” She laughs, relieved, excited, hopeful, “it’s mostly ruins, there’s no roof or floors or anything, just the walls and the cross, but the churchyard is still there too!”

 

Adam’s heard about it in passing before. Mostly kids from the trailer park, teenagers daring each other to spend the night in the woods, in the old graveyard. “They used to bury people there,” something heavy eases from his chest; he can finally breathe again. “It could work.”

 

“And it’s on the ley line, too!” Blue grins, eyes alight in the artificial light, “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before! We go there every year, on St. Mark’s Eve, to stand vigil on the corpse road.”

 

“It’s the perfect place,” Henry nods, infected by her enthusiasm. Robobee flies in from the window, buzzing quietly and settling on his cupped palm. 

 

“ _ It’s the right place,”  _ Gansey agrees, with all the certainty only his unwavering faith on all of them could brew. Adam thinks of Henry calling him  _ President _ and thinks that he can see it, too. 

 

The sun has finished setting, and it’s so very dark outside. Somewhere in the garden, they can hear Gwenllian singing insults by Artemus’ tree. Mr. Gray’s minivan is carelessly parked in the curb and Ronan’s BMW is still somewhere by the farmer’s market. The world is still drumming offbeat, but it’s already a little less wrong.

 

*

 

“We should have waited for Mr.Gray,” Gansey watches dubiously as the woods become denser and denser on either side, the car won’t be able to go much further. “He  _ is _ a hitman, after all.”

 

Blue rolls her eyes, “one, Dean is still out of town and won’t be back for another couple of days,” she winces as they drive through a bump in the road, “two,  _ retired  _ hitman, and three,  _ shut up.” _

 

Henry smiles fondly at the pair on the front seats. Blue is driving again since she’s the only one who’s been there before, and Gansey won shotgun privilege by being Gansey. And hoarding the maps for himself. That left Henry and Adam to share the back seats, each claiming a row for themselves.

 

It’s been a long drive, enough time for night to settle, the dark swallowing trees and fields and road ahead. Adam wishes he could see the stars, at least, but the roof of the minivan is too low and the woods are too high, too dense. It does nothing to ease his anxiety.

 

He’s shaken back into reality when the engine begins sputtering, and  _ oh, this is not good.  _ The car crawls to a stop, the radio shrieks with high-pitched static before turning off abruptly. On the driver’s seat, Blue hisses a curse, twisting the key again and again, but Adam knows that won’t help. “It must be the battery,” he answers the unasked question.

 

“The flashlights aren’t working either,” Gansey offers, stubbornly shaking one of the torches against his hand, as if blunt force might will them into life. “None of them, in fact.”

 

_ Great.  _ The night outside is a hungry dark, the kind that swallows up every light it can find, casting shadows upon shadows in their places. The car isn’t working and they will have to make the last of the way on foot, and Adam thinks they might be swallowed up too. Looking back, he wonders if they haven’t already. 

 

“The phones are down too,” Henry says, running a hand through his spiked hair. “It’s a dead zone out here.”

 

“Because that’s not ominous at all,” Blue’s voice is quiet and flat, and Adam thinks she hadn’t meant to say it aloud. Then, louder, “we’ll have to walk the rest of the way, it’s not far from here, it’ll be fine.”

 

“It must be a side-effect of the ritual,” Henry guesses. The faint whirring of Robobee comes to life, a tremulous glow lights up the car. It barely illuminates their faces, but the yellowed light feels blessedly bright in contrast with the darkness outside. “That just might be a blessing in disguise, actually.”

 

“And why is that?”

 

“Well,” his careless shrug is an audible presence on his voice. It’s probably the fakest presence on the car. “That means it will all be back into working order after we shut down this whole summoning business. It’s a dreadfully long way back to Henrietta and I’d rather do it by car.”

 

It startles a strangled laugh out of Gansey, hoarse and brittle, coated in a darkness only a yellowing shade brighter than the sky. “How is it that we always end up in these situations without any adult supervision?”

 

“We’re all over 21, Gansey,” Adam snorts without really meaning to. The lightness in his words, too, are only half-meaning. “We  _ are  _ the adult supervision.”

 

“And on that cheery note,” Blue throws her door open, hopping out of the car. There’s a flash of pink and silver on her hand, but it’s too dark to properly see. “We should get going. Come on, losers, this is an ongoing rescue mission.”

 

In the darkness, Robobee flies ahead, like a lonesome firefly.

 

*

 

The rumors have nothing on the real thing, Adam decides. The church is barely a church, it’s barely a thing at all. It’s a decadent, crumbling testament that nature will one day reclaim this earth; nothing about it belongs to civilization anymore, not for a long time, and if there is a god in this place, it isn’t the same that used to be adored.

 

Blue had said there should be a wooden cross, but that’s nowhere to be seen. It might have been taken somewhere for safekeeping, it might have been swallowed by the vines, eaten away by moss and insects and plants.

 

It doesn’t matter. 

 

The churchyard is there, a sea of half-bent crosses and words carved in stones too worn down by time to be read anymore. It doesn’t matter, they don’t have to know their names, don’t have to recognize their family generations down the line. Their faith is enough.

 

What matters: a white sedan parked just outside the ruins.

 

What matters: the flickering glow of candles casting dancing shadows on the ivy-covered walls. On the low light, they seem to writhe alive.

 

What matters: this is the right place.

 

What matters: it’s not too late,  _ it’s not too late. _

 

What matters:  _ Ronan. _

 

*

 

“Okay, people,” Henry whispers, “what’s the plan?”

 

They are hiding on the woods, clinging to the element of surprise and hoping sounds won’t carry well around the trees. It’s a gamble, really, in places like this, physics don’t matter much.

 

“What’s there to plan?” Blue hisses, flippant, “he’s an old man. We can take a decrepit old man. We go in, knock ‘im out, get Ronan, get the Hell out of here.”

 

“This old man might not be all that he seems. He did somehow overpower Ronan,” Adam points out. “It might not be so easy.”

 

“Adam’s right,” Gansey agrees, nodding along thoughtfully. “We can’t afford to underestimate him. You know what they say about books and covers.”

 

“Well,” Henry whispers again, “I say we divide and conquer.”

 

“It’s only one man, there’s nothing to divide.”

 

“Oh, Adam,” he smirks, slow and dangerous, an expression so foreign on Henry’s face it startles Adam into silence. “There’s always something to divide and conquer.”

 

*

 

The night is cold, like all nights are cold just before winter, and especially so in Henrietta, in these woods. 

 

The night is dark, like all nights are dark just before something terrible happens, as if all the stars dimmed their light, as if all the stars faced the other way. 

 

Tonight is no exception, except maybe in the sense that it's abundantly colder and abundantly darker. Adam hopes that doesn't mean something abundantly worse will happen tonight, refuses to think of the dead elk in the middle of the road as anything beyond a belated warning. Yesterday he had said  _ tomorrow  _ and it had sounded like a perfectly rounded promise, the kind you don't go around breaking. 

 

But, here's the thing:

 

_ Omens are promises too. _

 

Only, they taste awfully bitter, like biting on his own tongue– not enough to pierce flesh, but enough to leave an aftertaste. Adam bites back a sigh, waiting for Gansey and the others to join him behind a headstone. Just a few more feet and they will have crossed the churchyard to the actual walls.

 

A flash of movement on his left catches his eye. Blue waves her hand again, a movement not unlike Gansey's awkward shuffling to get a waitress' attention and the irony doesn't seem to be lost on her either. She rolls her eyes, then tilts her head towards the nearest wall. It's a half-collapsed thing, not even six feet high, but it might be enough for a hiding spot. Adam nods.

 

Around them, the forest is louder than ever, buzzing and rustling and creaking and howling. It's a cacophony of sounds that drown any noise they make as they sneak quickly towards the church ruins. Maybe that's normal for these part of the woods. Maybe Cabeswater isn't so silent after all.

 

This wall is overtaken by ivy just like every other, and when Adam presses his hand against the thick vines, they pulse against his skin like a heartbeat. Beside him, Blue pulls out her switchblade, flipping it open, and the blade catches the moonlight, shining impossibly silver. She moves swiftly, without hesitation, slashing once against the green.

 

Under his palm, the vines recoil, a faint, quick thing, more feeling than movement, and Adam's hand twitches. He murmurs a quiet  _ sorry _ before catching Blue's elbow. She raises one eyebrow at him, levels him with a look that says  _ we need to see inside _ . He acquiesces, tilting his head in a _ trust me  _ gesture. 

 

It's as much of a bluff as it's a leap of faith, and here of all places, Adam supposes the odds are on his favor. Still, as he taps the vines softly, feels them arching back under his touch in response, Adam hopes fiercely. Here, it's almost a prayer.

 

_ Obsecro, _ he asks, fumbling with the Latin,  _ move. _ He tries to push the images of what he needs, of ivy clearing from brick without the edge of a blade. _ Obsecro.  _

 

He can hear Gansey and Henry whispering behind him, but it doesn't matter, because while it whimpers on the back of his mind, the ivy slowly begins to recede, revealing weathered crumbling brick.  _ Gratias tibi,  _ he thanks it.

 

This church has been here for a long time. Long enough to be built, to be holy, to be forgotten; long enough to crumble, to find a new god, to be remembered. The roofs are gone, the floors have shattered, and without the vines holding them together, the bricks come apart easily on their hands.

 

One brick is all they dare to dig, but the space it leaves behind is enough for them to look inside. And, well. Now they know where the missing cross went.

 

Where once upon a time an altar might have stood, the cross leans against the wall, inverted.

 

"Hey, Blue," Gansey whispers, unsettled, "if consecrated grounds are beneficial for spells, what about  _ desecrated  _ ones?" She doesn't answer, she doesn't have to, not really.  _ Intent and belief _ . It echoes like thunder, it sounds like a storm brewing.

 

But Adam doesn't linger his stare on the cross. He follows it all the way down to the ground, past the altar, past–  _ fuck. _

 

In the last step below the altar, Ronan sleeps. 

 

Adam's not aware he's moving until Henry and Gansey are latching on his arms to pull him back. "Let go," he tells them, barely recognizes his own voice, but feels icy satisfaction in the way they flinch at his tone. " _ Let me go _ ."

 

"Adam, no," it's Blue that speaks, flicking him on the forehead to get his attention. She tugs at his shirt stubbornly until Adam tears his eyes away from the slow rise and fall of Ronan's chest-- proof of life, that he's alive, alive,  _ alive _ . "We can't just go storming in, guns blazing!" She hisses, tugging again to convey how serious she is, how serious  _ this _ is. As if Adam needs a reminder. "Mainly, because we don't have any guns."

 

_ There's Cabeswater _ , Adam wants to say,  _ there's magic.  _ He thinks of the vines clearing on his requests, of an afternoon spent tinkering along the ley line. But he knows it wouldn't work, not here, not now. The air is charged with  _ something _ , and it's not the fluttering light of  _ possibilities  _ that float in Cabeswater. Here, it feels tainted, heavy, dark.

 

" _ Fine, _ " Adam spits out the word like poison ivy, trying to shrug his arms free. Henry drops him immediately, but Gansey lingers, a worried, hesitant look on his face. "Gansey, _ let go. _ I said it's fine."

 

It takes him another beat to comply, like he’s afraid Adam might do something stupid, like Adam is a volatile element he isn’t sure how to handle. Gansey has never been very good at handling Adam. If he had, he would know Adam doesn’t like being grabbed like that, would know talking him down is better than forcing him back. 

 

Adam takes a deep breath.

 

“ _ Divide and conquer,”  _ Henry reminds him in a softer whisper. It sounds almost like an apology. 

 

Adam nods, reluctantly. And that, too, is almost an apology.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen, i procrastinated this fic so hard, so now this is all caught up to all I've had already written. Hopefully, updates will remain as scheduled, but graduation is around the corner, so, you know. 
> 
> as always, thanks <3


	8. veni, vidi, vici

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cabeswater should probably learn some chill.

They split up.

 

Gansey and Henry stay put, waiting for their sign. Blue and Adam circle around the ruins because Blue is short and light and Adam knows how to be quiet. 

 

He had to, growing up with his father. Not being noticed meant surviving another day, meant one less bruise, meant one less broken rib, meant one less scar.

 

So, when Gansey says they need to be  _ utterly  _ quiet, Adam almost laughs. This isn’t the first demon he needs to slip by silently.

 

Truthfully, it might not even be the worst.

 

Regardless, he and Blue make their way around the walls, searching for an opening. The grass under their feet is dry and brittle, snapping under their feet like twigs, but the crickets are whirring, whirring, whirring and every little sound is drowned by the roar of the forest.

 

It’s a loud sort of silence that cloaks them better than any shadow.

 

Blue tugs at his shirt, pointing at the crawlspace between walls, enough for them to slip inside the old sacristy. She goes first, easily disappearing from his sight. Adam follows, ignoring the way the damp grass stains his jeans, the sharp scratches of jagged-edged bricks on his arms, on the back of his neck, on his sides. 

 

The sacristy is so small, a square of a room still holding the debris of a roof that collapsed long before either of them had been born, but Blue and Adam press themselves against the wall, catching their breath and listening for any sign they might have been made.

 

Silence.

 

Adam nods, swallowing back a shaky breath and forcing his lungs to work as they’d work in a normal Monday night; steady, constant, calm. The door leading to the altar has been broken down by vines, wrestled to the ground, hinges and all, and turned into nothing but rotting wood, a nursery for mushrooms and insects and weeds to grow on. Adam sidesteps it as best as he can, eyes scanning the church.

 

From his place in the shadows, he can see the cross, hanging inverted in a show of dramatics that makes him roll his eyes more than stirring any fear on his chest. He sees Ronan, still asleep, still breathing, still  _ alive,  _ and now Adam notices the IV hooked to his arm, a bag of unlabeled medicine dripping, dripping, dripping on his bloodstream; a sedative, he guesses.

 

Anger boils on his gut, and Adam closes his eyes, needing a moment to gather himself together before his emotions spill and scatter on the church floor like some bloody sacrifice for a god of war. When it feels less like a grenade without a safety pin and more like rolling thunders in the distance, Adam opens his eyes again.

 

He sees an old man– the old man from the store, his mind supplies bitterly– sitting in one of the rotting pews. There are newspapers covering the seat and the back, as if he didn’t want to get his sensible professor-ish shirt-and-slacks dirty. It’s so ridiculous– he’s on a rotting church, summoning a rotting demon, sitting on rotting wood, with newspapers spread under him and a book to read on as the night trickles by, identically unlabeled bags are stacked beside him.

 

A little hysterically, Adam wonders if he cleaned the needle before inserting the IV on Ronan’s arm, it can’t be very sanitary to do it on the middle of the woods and there isn’t even any rubbing alcohol anywhere he can see. He adds  _ infection  _ and  _ tetanus  _ to the ever-growing list of things he’ll need to keep an eye out for.

 

A tug on his shirt shakes him out of his head. Blue gives him a questioning look, he tilts his head towards the old man. Her eyes darken immediately, hands curling into a fist by her side; she recognizes him too. 

 

Movement catches his eye and Adam tears his gaze away from the man to Gansey and Henry, lurking by the wall, hidden by shadows and hanging vines. He wants to say  _ yes, now,  _ but the situation just got more complicated. Dragging away a somewhat-awake Ronan is one thing, that’s doable, between Adam and Blue, they can manage, but if the fluids on the IV really are sedatives, then they have no way of waking him up. Dragging an unconscious Ronan, IV and all, might prove to be a challenge.

 

Blue seems to share his doubts if the way she’s rocking back and forth on her heels is anything to go by. She bites her lower lip with a thoughtful expression, and the motion is so similar to Ronan worrying his stupid leather wristbands, Adam needs to lean on the wall to keep himself upright.

 

Whimper cuts through the church and Adam can see the man’s head snap up. The candle he had been using to illuminate his book snuffs out. Blue’s arm shoots out to press them against the wall until the vines dig on skin hard enough to bruise as if she could blend them into the ivy with sheer will. 

 

As he tracks the man’s movements, realization dawns on Adam like a winter morning: slowly and leaving him cold all over. The whimper had come from Ronan. Unsurprisingly, whatever he’s dreaming about must be some sort of nightmare, which is bad in and of itself, but by being Ronan, it’s even worse. The last time he had a nightmare, he brought more than one night horror back with him. 

 

This time, he might bring something worse.

 

Because that’s it, isn’t it?

 

There was no need for any sort of formal ritual for the same reason Cabeswater didn’t need any sort of formal ritual. Here, there is the ley line and there is Ronan Lynch. It’s enough.

 

The footsteps reverberate loudly on the silent church, a steady, dull  _ thump-thump  _ like a heartbeat. Dry leaves crunch beneath shoes, gravel grinds under his heel. The silence is heavy and charged, muted in a way that Adam thinks he might be able to hear his own heart, his own blood, and– 

 

_ It’s too silent. _

 

If before the forest had been alive with background noise, now there’s nothing. No hissing of crickets, no crying of an owl, weeping of cicadas, no flapping of wings, no howling of the wind. 

 

Everything is deathly still.

 

Except– Adam locks eyes with Gansey from across the room, a growing storm brewing inside them. This is wild Gansey, Adam guesses, with lightning on his eyes and thunder on his tongue.  _ It’s now or never,  _ they understand. This is where they stop being the prey.

 

Blue is beside him, stiff and coiled like a bowstring ready to snap; her fingers grip nearby vines vice-like and the drumming of her blood echoes through the ivy.  _ Thump-thump,  _ goes her heart;  _ thump thump,  _ goes the footsteps.

 

One minute ticks by slowly, silent clock hands steadily moving, moving, moving, and the man is now kneeling by Ronan, fussing over the IV line, changing bags and spilling the transparent liquid all over the floor. Adam fidgets, Henry is running out of time, they need Robobee now, they need a diversion  _ now.  _ If they wait for much longer, it might be too late.

 

The candles go out all at once in a synchronized  _ whoosh  _ of a phantom wind, and the church shivers.

 

Something echoes all around, a faint whisper of words strung together in a chain of honeyed fly-traps. It’s a hand reaching out from the bottom of a pond, with fingers curling around ankles like algae when the water is too dark to see through. It’s little insect legs skittering away under dry leaves every October. 

 

Adam swallows thickly, choking on the cold fear pulling his heart through his throat, and looks up at the sky. Shouldn’t he see the moon? There are no stars, just an endless dark. Shadows flicker in the altar. Adam counts the candles. One. Two. Three–  _ nine.  _ Three groups of three. Smoke floats up toward the black sky. Nine candles splatter the once-upon-a-time linoleum floor with cooling wax. They are all out, but the shadows still flicker.

 

Henry’s stricken face comes into view, panic clearly painted even from far away. Something went wrong. He waves something that might be Robobee, but it’s impossible to make out details. The sentiment gets across, though. 

 

_ “We’re fucked,”  _ Blue whispers, with feeling, and Adam holds his breath as he waits for the man to pick up the noise and snap into a killing spree.  _ “What do we do?” _

 

The question is directed to Adam, because Adam is the only one close enough to hear, but he can’t, for the life of himself, understand why he has to be the one always coming up with the plans.  _ What now, Adam?  _ Gansey is always asking.  _ What now?  _

 

For once, Adam wishes it could be someone else’s problem. He’d like to have a meltdown of his own, thank you very much, without needing to worry about things falling apart in the meantime.

 

With a tired sigh, he gathers himself, shoving all the stray emotions into neat little boxes to be revisited later, possibly never.  _ Compartmentalize,  _ he tells himself. Adam’s good at compartmentalizing, he can do this. 

 

The original plan hadn’t been bad.  _ Divide and conquer,  _ Henry Cheng had said.  _ Let’s split his attention,  _ he had meant,  _ let’s create a diversion.  _

 

There’s just one problem in Henry’s plan. Well, two, now, but. Originally, intrinsically, preternaturally, there had been just one problem with Henry’s plan: it meant  _ they _ were divided, too. 

 

Now, they are stranded in opposite sides of a skeleton of a church, in an unnaturally silent night and with Robobee out of commission, finally affected by whatever killed the car’s battery, the flashlights, their cell phones. Adam wonders if it’s the demon getting stronger that caused it, or Ronan’s getting weaker. He wonders if they are mutually exclusive, and then screeches to a halt with that line of thought. 

 

Gansey watches as Adam swallows around the roots reaching from his lungs and squeezing at his throat, and waits until Adam can taste something other than petrichor. A shiver runs down his spine, and Blue huddles closer, as the air grows impossibly cold, cold, cold, like winter nights never are in Virginia. Their breaths are small, white clouds of air visible even in the dark, melting against the vine-covered walls.   

 

They need to go on with the plan, they need a new diversion, and they need it quickly, because things are escalating too fast, too out of control, and the old man is almost finished changing the IV bags. The shadows are still flickering, swirling, growing by the altar, and the dry creaking of spidery insect legs skittering in the dark is a faint whisper echoing over the pews.

 

There’s a desperate hunch of Gansey’s shoulders that remind Adam a little too much of the resigned way he had accepted his fate three years ago. It’s self-sacrificing Gansey and wild Gansey meeting in one panic-drenched minute, and that’s– that can’t be a good mix. Adam braces himself, expecting recklessness, stupid bravery, and the nuclear bomb of all diversions.

 

Blue must pick up on it too, frowning despairingly, but quickly resigning herself to run damage control in the fallout of whatever Henry and Gansey might be up to. Hopefully, it will be more stealthily sneaking Ronan and half a dozen medical equipment back to their car and less digging unmarked graves somewhere in the Barns.

 

In the end, it falls somewhere in the middle.

 

It happens in the blink of an eye that takes the old man to begin drawing something on the floor by the candles, the book he had been reading open in the floor by his feet. Gansey steps around the wall, fully into the church and the line of sight, standing tall and proud, a fierce look on his eyes, and Henry follows, backing him up on his defiant stance. 

 

“Hey, asshole,” Gansey calls, and it sounds so very wrong coming from his mouth, even if his voice doesn’t waver, carrying past the pews with the same grave, commanding tone as always. “Step away from him!”

 

The old man snaps his head up, getting to his feet in one movement too fluid for someone who looks one light breeze away from collapsing, and a handgun is on his hands, aimed steadily towards Gansey and Henry. “You shouldn’t have followed me here, boys.” He tuts, his voice the same grandfatherly rumble that it had been at the store.  _ God,  _ to think that– no, not going there, Adam needs to stay in the moment, he needs to pay attention. “If you’re thinking you can save your friend, I’m afraid it is too late. There’s nothing you can do to stop it now.”

 

“Why don’t you put the gun down?” Henry says slowly, enunciating every syllable carefully, with a calm, collected voice, and betraying nothing of the anger settled on the lines of his stiff shoulders. “Then, we can talk. I’m sure we can reach an agreement, there’s no need for guns. We’re all reasonable people here, right, Mr.?”

 

“Wright. Gerard Wright,” the old man,  _ Gerard,  _ says bemusedly. Then, his fingers tighten on the trigger, the sounding of the safety being clicked off echoing too loud. “And you’re right, boy. I am, indeed, nothing if not reasonable, so I’m sure you will understand that I  _ have  _ to kill you, won’t you? You’ve seen my face, now, you’re forcing my hand.”

 

“ _ You’ve kidnapped our friend,”  _ Gansey bursts, words spilling out like a Molotov cocktail thrown from across the room. “ _ To summon a demon!” _

 

Gerard pauses, looking almost chagrined. “Yes, it sounds bad when you put it like that, doesn’t it?”

 

“ _ There’s no other way to put it!” _

 

“So you do see why I have to kill you lot?” He asks, earnestly, “I honestly wish there was another way, but,” he waves the gun around, gesturing the entirety of the altar and the candles and Ronan still lying unconscious. “You understand, right?”

 

Adam listens to their conversation with growing unease. Gerard isn’t on his right mind, that much is clear, his movements are manic with a barely contained energy that shouldn’t be possible for someone his age, and his words seek too much absolution, too much rationalization, to be sane. 

 

That’s dangerous. If Gerard is insane, there’s no knowing what he might do, the lengths he might be willing to go. Maybe if they knew  _ why  _ he’s doing this, then maybe– 

 

But there’s no time. It doesn’t matter why.

 

Blue shakes his arm, urgency spelled on her wrinkling forehead, and Adam flails a little, helpless in his inability to just  _ think _ of something to do, even after Gansey trusted him to come up with a plan to get them all out of this, trusted him enough to step unflinchingly in the line of fire of a psychopath, even with Ronan still passed out on the floor of the church with god-knows-what flooding his veins, even with Henry staring down his own trauma, even with Blue counting on him to get Gansey safely out of his own loyal bravery. 

 

But Adam, he can’t– 

 

This isn’t Cabeswater for him to barter with, to ask for a magical g _ et-out-of-jail-free  _ card, to wish for a  _ deus ex-machina _ and receive. This isn’t– 

 

Except.

 

_ It is, isn’t? _

 

He thinks of the vines clearing under his touch, of the unmarked graves dug in ancient soil, of spirits walking past the same road year after year after year. 

 

This isn’t Cabeswater, but it’s still in the ley line.

 

There’s still magic, there’s still hope.

 

But first, he needs to redirect what’s blocking the energy from flowing freely in this place. The ley line is dying, starving here, it won’t be able to help if Adam doesn’t figure out what’s wrong first. He closes his eyes, ignoring Blue’s indignant noise beside him, and prays Cabeswater will guide him through the motions,  _ please, you have to want to save him, too. _

 

There’s the familiar rush of something  _ other  _ that accompanies the forest, the smell of grass and moss, and Adam breathes in clear cold air, along with Cabeswater’s presence.

 

_ Of course it’s the inverted cross. _

 

Because why the fuck not. At this point, Adam doesn’t even have it in himself to feel insulted, and, to be fair, it has more to do with where it is than whatever meaning horror movies managed to impress on crosses in general.

 

“I have a plan,” he whispers, thanking whatever stroke of luck that this guy likes to make speeches, “but I’m not sure you’re going to like it.”

 

“A bad plan is better than no plan,” Blue hisses back, eyes fixed on the gun Gerard is still waving around, “as long as we get them out of here alive.”

 

“Hopefully, we  _ all  _ get out of here alive,” Adam agrees, not entirely believing his own words, but hoping speaking them aloud is enough to set it in stone. “I need to move that cross.”

 

“Okay,” Blue breathes out, “and then?”

 

Adam coughs awkwardly, smothering the sound with his hand. “Hope for the best?”

 

“That’s it?  _ That’s your plan?”  _ She hits him in the arm with closed fists, hard enough to make him wince.  _ “Hope for the best?” _

 

“Do you have a better plan?” He inches away from her, bristling a little even if his plan is, admittedly, lacking a few steps. Briefly glancing up, Adam watches as Psycho Gerard continues his speech, talking in convoluted ways that Adam has no interest to follow. Still, it keeps him busy, that’s all they need. “Look, that guy has a gun and nothing to lose, we don’t have much time left. Besides, come on. All we have ever done is hope for the best when it comes to magic. When was the last time we actually thought things through?”

 

“You know, we’re supposed to be better now,” Blue hisses angrily, huffing out a white cloud of condensation that hits Adam’s shoulders, “older and wiser, not reckless and dumb. Our plans are supposed to be less  _ wing it  _ and more  _ careful consideration.” _

 

Well, she does have a point, Adam can admit that. And he agrees with her, he does, but circumstances keep throwing them in impossible situations where  _ careful consideration  _ flies out of the window before he can even finish lining up words into coherent thoughts. “I mean, you’re not wrong, but it’s not like there’s a lot for me to work with here.”

 

Blue makes a face, eyes shining with worry and anger, and Adam sees the second she resigns herself to his plan. It immediately makes him feel better, setting something loose on his chest and letting go of air he hadn’t realized he’d been holding on his lungs, because Blue is tough as nails and there was no way this plan could work without her help. “Fine. I’ll cover you.” She pauses, looking around and pulling out her switchblade, then warns, “but you’ll have to  _ run.” _

 

Adam nods, shifting and steeling himself for what he needs to do next. He always fucking hated gym class and the fact a demon is the reason he has to sprint again is further proof gym classes are from  _ Hell. _

 

But _ man, _ there’s no preparing for this.

 

It happens too fast, everything spins out of control, changing too quickly for him to consciously keep up. Blue dashes out of the shadows of their hiding place, shouting to Gansey and Henry to  _ duck!  _ She barrels into Gerard, knocking him out of balance and into the rows of pews, the compromised wood collapsing easily under the blunt force.

 

And Adam doesn’t know what happens next, because he’s running, running, running towards the altar as fast his legs allow him, and he hopes the fact he’s not tripping over any vines is a sign Cabeswater is trying its best to help them with the sliver of energy it has.

 

All he has to do now is keep his end of the bargain.

 

He collides with the cross at full speed, throwing all his weight against it and feeling it slide to the side, crumbling to the floor and taking Adam with it. The wood is as rotten as the rest of the church, breaking as soon as they hit the ground and Adam feels splinters digging into his skin as they roll down the steps. 

 

A gunshot pierces the sounds of struggle and Adam feels his pulse jump but he can’t turn away to look, can’t pay attention, can’t figure out what is going on there, because the cross isn’t blocking the leyline anymore and energy is flooding in with overwhelming waves. It pulls him under like ocean tides and he feels Cabeswater tugging at his attention again, but caught up in the riptide of the leyline like he is, all he can do is pray it’s enough, his mind stuck in a loop of  _ please please work please–  _

 

A scream shoots next, hoarse and strangled and terrified, and this time Adam can bring his body to move a bit, stiff limbs aching with every movement, just in time to catch the tail end of the fight. Henry and Gansey seem not to have listened to Blue, half-lying on the floor and propped on their elbows to stare at the unfolding scene, while Blue herself is leaning heavily against a pew, a bruise blooming on her cheek, but her other hand gripping the gun with tight knuckles.

 

But the screaming is coming from Gerard and it’s pretty clear why. Vines are sprouting from the floor, sneaking up his legs and arms, wrenching shoulders out of their sockets when he tries to flail out of their grasp. Thorns leave behind deep bloodied scratches as the ivy writhes and climbs up his body, wrapping around his neck and down his mouth, cutting off the next scream with a throat slit from the inside out and lungs torn open. 

 

When the vines drag the distorted corpse underground, down whatever pit they had grown out of, well, Adam isn’t surprised. 

 

Cabeswater has never had any chill, alright.

 

And maybe he should feel a little more horrified by that, but he can’t say he regrets anything, not when Gerard had aimed a gun at Gansey’s temple and Henry’s heart and injected Ronan with god-knows-what and Blue’s face is half purple. Maybe Cabeswater went a little overboard, but Adam is willing to let that go if it means keeping them all safe.

 

There’s not much he isn’t willing to compromise if it means keeping them safe.

 

“Is everyone all right?” Gansey asks, helping Blue up and allowing her to lean her weight between him and Henry. Adam pushes himself off the floor, feeling the numbness of adrenaline slowly give way to sharp stabs of pain all over his body, but he still limps forward, past the debris and chunks of wood, over to where they stand, leaning against each other. “Oh, Adam, you’re bleeding–”

 

“What, no, I’m–  _ oh.”  _ He looks down, surprised to find that Gansey is right, there’s a red stain steadily growing on his shirt. Sure enough, when he lifts the fabric, it unsticks from his skin wetly, blood trickling down to his jeans, and a piece of wood is impaling his side.  _ Oh,  _ so  _ that’s  _ where the pain is coming from. “I’m fine. It’s fine. I don’t think it hit any organ. It’ll be fine as long as I don’t take it out.”

 

“Adam,” Henry says, sounding every bit as horrified as his face shows, “I don’t think you understand the meaning of  _ fine.  _ There’s a  _ piece of wood poking from your side.” _

 

“I’ve had worse, honestly,” Adam shrugs, already done with this conversation and focusing on more important and urgent things like the fact all this shitshow wreaked havoc on the church but Ronan didn’t so much as stir, while Adam is sure those shadows had not been this long before. “The wood will hold the bleeding if I don’t jostle it too much. Right, Blue?”

 

_ “What?  _ Hey, hey, I’m a biologist, not a doctor,” she shakes her head frantically, “don’t use me as an excuse to be a self-sacrificing idiot. No medical training whatsoever over here.” A pause. “Although he’s not wrong, I guess. It should stop the bleeding until we get you to a hospital.  _ But I’m not a doctor! _ ”

 

Ignoring Gansey’s subsequent spluttering, Adam limps to where Ronan is laying, knocking out all the candles, kicking them as far away as he can, and kneels beside him. His heart is beating up his throat as he tries to feel for Ronan’s pulse, failing desperately at taking calming breaths until he feels a faint beat under his shaking fingers and his entire body seem to collapse in itself in relief. 

 

The IV hooked to his arm is still more than half-full, and Adam has no idea what’s in there, but it can’t be good if the way Ronan’s breathing is erratic and shallow, speeding up and slowing down at random intervals, lips tinted blue.

 

“Blue,” Adam calls, not looking away from the rise and fall of Ronan’s chest, “what’s in the IV bags?”

 

He hears her approaching, the rustle of her clothes as she kneels beside him and looks over Ronan’s pale skin, checks his pulse. When she’s done, her mouth is a thin line that spells no good news. “I’m not sure, I think that guy said something about tranquilizers, but it doesn’t matter. I think he’s OD-ing.”

 

“What,” Adam says calmly, or at least he thinks he does, but he can’t be sure, because it all sounds very far away, muted, washed-out. He sees Blue frowning, her mouthing moving but no noise reaches him, only the buzzing on his ears and the rushing of his blood. This isn’t happening. They came this far. This can’t be it.  _ This isn’t happening.  _

 

_ “Adam!”  _ Blue is shaking his shoulder as gentle as she seems capable of, her face pinched in a mask of worry and fear and desperation. Adam can relate, really. The wound on his side pulses painfully, and that, at least, grounds him. “I said, we need to wake him up.  _ Now.” _

 

“But the tranquilizer,” he trails off. He isn’t sure where he had been going with that sentence. “He won’t wake up. He won’t want to.” It’s the stupidly self-sacrificing sort of thing they all seem to choose. For once, he wishes Ronan would choose himself over them. “Not if he still thinks he’ll bring the demon back.”

 

Blue looks at Gansey and Henry, frantically trying to scrub off the drawings Gerard had carved into the floor, and poison ivy bursting through stone to break through the geometrical designs. The shadows around the church already feel less oppressive, less sentient, less hungry. “But he won’t, not anymore.” Pulling up her phone, she sighs relieved as the flashlight turns on and checks his pupils, frowning at whatever conclusion she comes to. “He really doesn’t have much time, I think he’s concussed, but  _ I’m not a doctor,”  _ she lets out a shuddery breath, struggling to keep it together, “I’m not a doctor. I don’t know how to help, so you’ll have to go in and tell him yourself.”

 

This is a terrible idea. Now Adam knows how Blue felt when he told her his plan. But a bad idea is still an idea, and it’s better than stand there and do nothing, so Adam agrees.

 

There’s no lake or bowl for him to fill with water, so Ronan’s lighter from what feels like so, so long ago, will have to do again. Adam digs it up from his pocket, sitting down on the floor and flicking it open.

 

A yellow flame flares into life.

 

And Adam tries to lose himself, tries to focus on the flickering fire dancing on his hand, but the glow of the lighter is too weak in the open space of the church and Gansey and Henry are making so much noise scratching at the floor and Adam can’t stop thinking about Ronan lying on the floor not even a foot away from him and– 

 

This isn’t working.

 

He needs something bigger. Adam looks around, gathering the loose rocks scattered near him in a makeshift circle. Hopefully, it’ll work to hold the flames inside. He tears the lighter open, spilling the lighter fluid in a pool on the floor, and with no roof, the liquid shines with moonlight, reflecting off little dots of stars.

 

“Don’t bring me back until I do it on my own,” he tells Blue as he searches for the box of matches in Ronan’s jacket. It feels so wrong going through his pockets with him unconscious, but he’ll have time to apologize later. When they are all alive and safe back at the barns. There’ll be time. “And tell Gansey to call Declan to check on Opal and Matthew. Okay?”

 

Blue glares at him, but her heart is clearly conflicted. She understands, Adam guesses, even if she worries. So she nods absently and presses her pink switchblade on his open palm. “He gave me this before we went out this morning. It might go through with you, so, you know. Just in case.”

 

Adam looks at it, thinking back at only just this morning and the peace that had seemed to coat everything back then. Had it really been less than twenty-four hours? “Thanks,” he swallows past the boulders piling up in his throat, “take care of them while I’m under, yeah?”

 

She nods again, certain and determined, her face sharp with confidence. “Bring him back.”

 

Blue rests her hand on his shoulder, and Adam lights a match, watching the flame spark into life, then drops it on the lighter fluid, and for the first time since this afternoon, his hands don’t shake. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> look i'm not happy about this chapter, but time is short and college is currently being a pain. anyway hope everyone has a lovely week <3


	9. dum viviumus, vivamus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> who are you gonna call?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay first, i'm sorry this took one week longer than usual, but I had SO many things to do for college, and I didn't want to rush the last chapter.
> 
> that being said, i'm still not really happy with this, but i realized if i didn't do it now, I wouldn't have the time beforenext year, at least. so, here we are.

Adam’s back on Cabeswater.

 

He knows this even before opening his eyes, knows it from the moment he’s hit with the earthy smell of grass and rainwater.

 

Breathing in deeply, he gets to his feet, thankful to notice the piece of wood didn’t travel with him, and looks around, searching for Ronan or anything out of place.

 

Here, Cabeswater is stronger, brighter, clearer, and the air feels lighter, fluttering with magic in a way the real world can never be. But still, there’s something off about it, something that doesn’t belong, just out of reach.

 

So Gansey and Henry are still working on those drawings, he supposes.

 

Now, if only he could find Ronan– 

 

“Adam?”

 

The rush of relief that washes over him makes him stumble, knees wobbling under the sudden weight of  _ oh thank god  _ that crushes his chest, when he hears it. Adam turns around, catching sight of the figure jogging close, and he wants to move, help cross the remaining distance, but his feet feels rooted to the spot and he’s kind of afraid any sudden movement might shatter this stroke of luck and throw him back to the old church.

 

But now that Adam is looking and paying attention, he can see that Ronan isn’t jogging, he’s  _ running,  _ dashing towards him and– 

 

“Up the tree,” Ronan shouts, gesturing the massive oak behind Adam,  _ “now!” _

 

Maybe if it were any other day, maybe if their lives had been just a little bit different, Adam would have hesitated before scrambling up the branches, but with the day he just had, climbing up a tree for no apparent reason is probably only the eighth weirdest thing he did, if that.

 

It’s kind of an uphill battle, what with the dry bark scratching up his hands and arms, and coming off every time he tries to find a foothold to hold on to. Adam had never been the sort of kid to play around in the woods or climb up trees in his spare time, and frankly, it shows.

 

“What the fuck, Parrish,” Ronan growls, already sitting in one of the lowest branches thick enough to hold their weight. He watches impatiently as Adam tries to secure a steady enough hold on the tree, then curses loudly again, helping haul Adam up beside him. “Didn’t you ever climb a fucking tree?”

 

“Excuse me,” Adam pants, leaning back against the truck to try and catch his breath, “if my childhood didn’t entail running around a farm.” 

 

Ronan snorts, but it sounds stilted, out of breath. There’s a minute of silence, where the only noises are the quiet forest notes, insects and birds chirping cheerfully and a stream somewhere near rushing soothingly. Already the air feels more right, less deceptive, and kinder. Whatever Gansey and Henry are doing, it’s working.

 

And now that they are seemingly safe from whatever it is Ronan had been running from, it’s finally dawning on Adam the fact that yes, Ronan is here, alive, safe, and  _ right here.  _ The branch creaks under his weight but doesn’t quiver, holding steady as he crawls forward a little until their knees are touching and Adam can see the tiny cuts all over Ronan’s arms and the blood drying on a gash just above his left eyebrow. Adam raises a hand to touch it, but decides against it, his fingers are caked with dirt and dried-up bark, so he settles for holding his face as gentle as he can, smiling up in a way he knows must bee letting through all the sea of emotions that’s been lapping at his chest all day. “You’re here,” Adam says, leaning forward until their foreheads touch and he can count every lash on his eyes, “I found you.”

 

“Of course you did,” Ronan shrugs and it echoes all through his body and Adam’s bones feel like a bird’s, hollow and light, just a twitch away from snapping, “always knew you would.”

 

Adam kisses him to shut him up, because it feels too much, too soon, and Adam’s patchwork plan, so full of room for error that he might’ve been able to build a Taj Mahal for all that could’ve gone wrong, doesn’t deserve this kind of faith. 

 

But then again, Ronan always had more faith in Adam than Adam ever had on anything at all.

 

Except, well– a learning curve is still an upward graph.

 

So Adam kisses Ronan and his chest unravels in a ribbon of fabric coming undone, and maybe now there will be space for his lungs to expand with oxygen. 

 

“What happened?” Ronan asks, coming up for air, and holding Adam up, making sure they don’t fall off the tree because Adam already gave up on gravity. “Are you okay?”

 

“I’m fine,” Adam– not  _ lies,  _ he  _ is  _ fine, here at least, and even on the other side, the piece of wood is barely the size of his fist anyway, and it’s fine as long as they don’t move it. “Cabeswater took care of that psychopath, Gerard, he was like, literally swallowed up by the earth.”

 

“Good,” he says, voice hard and glinting with steel, “son of a bitch closed the hood of his car on me. The back of my head is still sore.”

 

Yeah, Adam is definitely not losing any sleep over that guy’s fate.

 

“He’s dead,” Adam tells him, nodding sharply, satisfied. But it turns sour fast. Blue was right, he realizes, Ronan really does have a concussion. Adam takes his arm, gently turning it over to look at the inside of his elbow. There, where the IV should be, is a tiny red dot, like a fading injection scar already scabbing over. “But because nothing is ever that easy, he’s got you hooked on some sort of tranquilizer.”

 

“You can’t wake me up,” Ronan says, but it’s absently. His eyes are fixed on the red dot, fingers coming to trace around it as if he’s expecting to feel the bump of the needle there. “And the demon? Did you guys stop it? It’s been trying to force me to wake up ever since I arrived here.” He points the vague directions of the woods from where he had burst from, “I’ve nearly had my ass kicked by at least a dozen different things. A giant ass wolf had been chasing me when I saw you.”

 

Sure enough, as soon as the words are out of his mouth, there’s the tell-tale rustle of leaves and a wolf as big as a small horse comes trotting out of the tree line, tongue lolling to the side and canines glinting in the sun. Its fur is a white that blinds like clean snow in the light, and when it blinks, Adam can see his eyes are blood red. 

 

And man, Adam’s glad he’s all the way up the tree now.

 

Ronan makes a noise of distress, half annoyed, half  _ there, see it?  _ But there’s something familiar about the wolf, about its fur, its size, its red eyes– 

 

“Have you been watching Game of Thrones?” Adam asks, not sure if he should be amused or exasperated, or something else entirely. “Like, recently?”

 

“Yeah, I mean,” Ronan gives him a weird look, as if he has room to judge on strange behavior. The moral high ground here is non-existent when it comes to supernatural bullshit. “I’m halfway through the last season, why–  _ oh no.” _

 

“Oh yes,” Adam points at the dire wolf sniffing the tree with hungry eyes, “that’s Ghost right there. Gansey and Henry already erased the runes, this isn’t the demon anymore. It’s your subconscious fucking with you.”

 

Adam waits as Ronan curses again. And again. Personally, Adam thinks this is better than the night horrors, at least wolves don’t fly, and just knowing the demon is gone back to whatever circle of hell it came from is enough to paint everything in a better light. 

 

“That’s just great,” Ronan glares at the wolf on the ground. Ghost snarls up at them, baring its teeth. “Like the night horrors weren’t horror enough.”

 

“To be fair,” Adam offers, “I think this is more about whatever drug Gerard gave you than anything.”  _ shit, right.  _ “Oh my god,” he must be losing blood, his thoughts are beginning to run scattered on his brain. Adam breathes in. He needs to get it together. “You need to wake up, like,  _ right now.  _ That’s why I’m here, we can’t wake you up because of the tranquilizer but you’re OD-ing and we need you to wake up  _ now.” _

 

“I can’t, if I wake up now with everything fucked up and the demon–”

 

“Is gone, okay? We took care of it,” Adam shakes his shoulder lightly, trying to get his point across but not by sending them both back to the ground near the prowling wolf circling the tree. “And even if– whatever you bring, we’ll deal with it. Just. You being alive is all I care, okay? As long as you’re okay, we’ll deal with the rest.”

 

Ronan opens his mouth, closes it. Then, “I don’t know how,” he confesses, “I  _ literally _ can’t wake up. It’s like sleeping pills, it’ll keep me here until it’s all gone.”

 

This is bad. Okay, this is very bad. “Except Gerard kept you in IV since this afternoon, your body can’t metabolize that much medicine. It’ll kill you before it cycles through.” Adam can fix this. It’ll be fine. They are in Cabeswater, and Cabeswater won’t let Ronan die. It’ll be fine. “Okay, new plan. We need a new plan, that’s all.”

 

“You had a plan before?”

 

“Yes, and it was called  _ not dying.  _ So, let’s focus on that.” Adam sees the world tilting once, a quick swaying of reality that leaves him lightheaded. “Okay. We need to wake you up. Step one, stop thinking about Game of Thrones. The wolf showed up after you talked about it, so, stop thinking about it.”

 

“It’s not– you can’t just say  _ stop thinking about it _ ” Ronan cries, gesturing the ground where Grey Wind seems to have joined its brother. “That’s all I can think about now!”

 

“Okay, okay, fair enough,” he concedes, grimacing, as Ghost paws at the tree trunk, way too close to them for comfort. “Try, I don’t know, keep your mind blank? Think of an empty, white room, totally blank– no windows, no doors. Just, white walls, white nothing.”

 

Adam watches Ronan level him with an unimpressed glare, and maybe it’s the hysterical edge of the situation, or the ridiculousness of hiding from two fictional direwolves, but laughter bubbles up on his chest and Adam has to grind his teeth to keep it from spilling. 

 

It works, even as Ronan wrinkles his nose, scrunches up his whole face, in an effort of not thinking anything else, and slowly the rustling of padded feet pacing around stops, the wolves fading into the shadows in a shimmer of light.

 

“It’s working,” Adam breathes in relief, nudging Ronan’s knee, “they’re gone. Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it.”

 

“About that,” he says, opening his eyes, lips pulling in an apologetic grimace. “Not a good idea.” 

 

Of course. It would be too easy otherwise. “What do you mean?”

 

Before Ronan can answer, the whole forest line shakes, trees parting and falling out of the way, and in the distance, a shape is beginning to solidify, a white mass towering over everything, slowly making its way towards them, and– 

 

“You have got to be kidding me,” Adam deadpans, turning to glare at Ronan. “Seriously?”

 

His boyfriend–  _ a flutter on his stomach–  _ shrugs helplessly. “What you said reminded me of that movie!”

 

Sure enough, the white mass is done shaping up and the Marshmallow Man is kicking down trees as it awkwardly shuffles forward, grinning brightly in a textbook example of Uncanny Valley.

 

“This is ridiculous,” Adam frowns, irritation winning over worry, “I’m not dying like this, I  _ refuse  _ to be murdered by a giant marshmallow. Do  _ you  _ want to have  _ giant marshmallow man  _ as cause of death on your obituary?” He shakes his head, feeling his stomach dropping when the branch creaks, “come on. We’re on your head, you can do this. Think of something else– something to take down the Macy’s balloon over there.” 

 

“And what the fuck would that be? A forest fire? A giant stick?” Ronan glares– not at Adam, well. Kind of at Adam, but mostly at swaying trees behind them. “It’s not like marshmallows come with some sort of kryptonite.”

 

“Anything,” Adam can feel the vibrations now, the way the ground trembles with each thundering step and woods tumbling on each other. More than that, color is beginning to fade, the blue stark blue sky is now a dull greying shade. Time is running out and he can almost hear the ticking of a clock. “You need to wake up, and you can’t focus on that with a murderous Macy’s balloon stalking you.”

 

Ronan grumbles, but he must be noticing the effects too, because that’s the extent of his complaining, as he closes his eyes again. 

 

The Marshmallow Man doesn’t melt back in the shadows, not like Adam had hoped, not even faltering in his gleeful warpath towards them, almost in arm’s reach now.

 

But before it could cross the last of their impromptu No-Man’s Land, the earth rumbles, a crack breaking right under the shade of the oak tree, and Adam is going to  _ kill  _ Ronan himself if a zombie climbs out of there. “Tell me you haven’t been watching Night of the Living Dead,” he says, half-pleading, half-threatening, “or the Walking Dead.”

 

“What?” Ronan blinks, peering down at the growing canyon with something that gleams almost like mischief in the pale sunlight, “the hell you’re talking about? Look, we’re on a themed ride here, okay? It’s  _ fitting.” _

 

Adam sighs. 

 

From the gap, thousands and thousands of tiny, colorful gummy bears are crawling to the surface, armed with equally tiny spears and tiny bows. They squeak what Adam thinks might be a battle cry, and charge against the marshmallow man, climbing up its leg and tearing at its gooey flesh.  “Gummy bears? Really?”

 

“I hate them,” Ronan tells him, still watching as his tiny soldiers tear into the marshmallow, swallowing him like a swarm of hungry roaches. “But it was all I could fucking think about after that one. And, you know. It  _ is  _ fitting.”

 

There’s something unsettling about the waves of gummy bears, but Adam couldn’t look away. Somehow, this isn’t how he pictured his evening going, even after the kidnapping. A sharp pain on his side stabs through the vaguely horrified haze, and Adam can’t bite back a whimper. Ronan whirls on him, eyes squinting in suspicion, “you’re hurt.”

 

“I’m fine,” Adam waves him off because they do have better things to do, more urgent things. “Don’t worry about it.”

 

“Parrish,” Ronan growls, “you’re  _ bleeding.  _ That’s not fine!”

 

“I’m not–  _ oh,”  _ there’s a red stain growing on his shirt, blood seeping through the cloth, and pain flares up.  _ Damn it.  _ He won’t be able to stay for much longer, he can’t concentrate if he’s side feels on fire. “ _ That _ . It’s just a scratch.”

 

“That doesn’t look like  _ just  _ a scratch,” he narrows his eyes, gesturing all the red painting his clothes, “ _ just  _ scratches don’t bleed like that. What happened?”

 

Adam hesitates to answer, but between one blink and the other, he’s back at the old church, Blue’s worried face looking down on him, and Gansey coming into view, frowning, and his mouth moves as if he’s saying Adam’s name, but no sound is coming through and– 

 

_ “Adam!”  _ Ronan is shaking his shoulder, careful not to jostle him too much, a tight expression on his face that probably means Adam must have zoned out here, “what the fuck?”

 

Shit.  _ Shit.  _ Okay, no. “I have to go back,” Adam says, blinking away dark spots on his vision, shadows that have no reason to be there, and fading afterimages across the tree line. “But you need to wake up.  _ Now.” _

 

“Parrish–”

 

“There’s no time,” he needs Ronan to understand this, needs him to see the urgency is not an overreaction. Mostly, Adam needs him to be okay. “I know you’ll figure out a way. I trust you. But you have to hurry.”

 

“That’s easy to say, but–”

 

“Just.  _ Wake up.”  _ Adam feels himself floating back, everything begins feeling less and less real, softer, faded– , “and I’ll see you on the other side.”

 

Adam falls into the sky.

 

*

 

Adam comes back with a gasping breath, hot air burning his face and all the way down to his lungs. The wound at his side aches along his heartbeat, a stabbing pain over and over with each second.

 

“Adam, oh my god,” Blue helps him stumble away from the fire, and it jostles the wood, almost sending him back to the floor. “Shit, sorry. Are you okay?”

 

“And what about Ronan?” Gansey is there, kicking sand into the flames, and guiding him to the nearest bench. “Why is he still unconscious?”

 

A headache is beginning to worm its way from the back of his head, but Adam ignores it, taking in his surroundings. The strange drawings are gone, scraped clean and no stone left unturned, and someone moved Ronan from the floor to another of the benches, Henry having Robobee keep an eye on his vitals. “I found him, in the new Cabeswater.” He frowns, grimacing, “but the sedatives are trapping him there. It’s– I don’t know.” He swallows thickly, closing his eyes. “I don’t know.”

 

“We need to get to a hospital,” Blue decides, her face set with determination, “both of you need a real doctor. Magic can only go so far.” She turns to Henry, “are cell phones back online?”

 

“Still no signal,” he shakes his head, “we’re too far out in the woods. We’ll have to carry him back to the car. Adam, can you walk on your own?”

 

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Adam tries standing up and the world spins in a merry-go-round of church benches and hanging vines, and  _ damn,  _ is Adam’s stomach upset about that. He clutches the armrest, taking a deep breath. “Let’s go.”

 

But before Gansey and Henry can do anything, Ronan wakes up with shuddery breath, gasping as he scrambles to a sitting position. When he does, a thousand tiny gummy bears fall from his arms, scattering across the floor– but thankfully not sentient.

 

Adam half-limps, half-stumbles, until he’s kneeling by his side, holding him up while he throws up, hopefully helping to get the drugs out of his system. “Knew you would make it,” he says, smiling in relief, “how did you do it?”

 

Ronan coughs, slumping against Adam’s chest, clearly exhausted, and huffs a strained laugh. “Dreamed up an adrenaline shot,” then he looks down, where Adam’s shirt is a bloody mess with the piece of wood sticking out. “You call  _ that  _ just a scratch?”

 

“Shut it, you’re one to talk,” Adam laughs, pressing a kiss to his forehead, grins, “let’s go home.”

 

Gansey makes a distressed noise, but it’s Blue that scoffs, “like hell we’re going home. We are going to a  _ hospital _ ,” she narrows her eyes, daring any of them to disagree, amends. “And  _ then,  _ home.”

 

Yes.  _ Home,  _ Adam thinks, as the others surround them in a group hug, a little painful, a little messy, and perfectly theirs.  _Home,_ finally.

 

*

 

The sun is rising on the sky and Adam can hear the Barns slowly stirring awake, the first beams of sunlight streaming through the leaves and the birds one by one beginning to sing. It’s even more peaceful than usual, a stark contrast with the chaos of the night before, bright and calm and so full of color.

 

Adam is leaning against the porch railing, watching the sunrise with tired eyes, and not thinking about Gansey asking him last night if he wants the afternoon flight back to New Haven or the 8:00pm. He’s been out here for some time, the sky had still been dark when he first stepped out, and the white bandages wrapped around his stomach are itching past the pain killers. 

 

Footsteps creak behind him, the front door opens and closes gently, and Ronan comes to stand beside Adam. He looks pale and tired, with shadows under his eyes, but it’s a better sight than five hours ago when they had rushed in the ER, bloodied and dirty, with leaves and soot staining their skin. “Couldn’t sleep?”

 

“Not really,” Adam shrugs with one shoulder, avoiding moving his injured side too much. “You?”

 

“I think I’ve slept enough today, thanks,” Ronan snorts, crossing his arms over his chest. They stand side by side, silently looking over the fields, the way it stretches on and on, all the way to the city limits. A plane flies overhead, the rumble of its engines roaring faintly in the background as it crosses the sky like a makeshift shooting star. But that’s good, Adam wouldn’t know what to wish for. “You’re leaving tomorrow?”

 

It’s not a question, and it’s technically today now, but Adam knows it’s no rhetorical, knows the questions under it are the ones he really needs to answer. “I have to, I already missed too many classes,” he says, tearing his eyes away from the fields and back to Ronan. “But I’m not forgetting anything this time.”

 

“You can’t promise that,” Ronan looks away, lips in a thin line. “Cabeswater can–”

 

“Go fuck itself, yeah,” Adam cuts him off, shifting so he’s facing him, dropping all pretenses of staring over the fields, and almost smirking at the light frown on Ronan’s face at his swearing. “Look, I won’t let it happen again.  _ I promise.” _

 

“It’s still gonna be hard.”

 

“Terribly, yes,” he agrees, “you hate phones and I don’t have enough free time.”

 

There’s a smile dawning on Ronan’s face now, and it’s the brightest thing in the early morning. “You sure you wanna do this?”

 

“More than anything,” Adam answers honestly, feeling his heart echoing the words with each beat, “I don’t care if it’s not easy. I love you, that’s all that matters.”

 

Ronan is looking at him with such raw intensity, all his emotions laid bare for Adam to read. He is a forest fire and Adam has veins made for gasoline. When Ronan leans in and kisses him, he welcomes the familiar inferno growing on his chest until it consumes all the oxygen on his lungs. 

 

He breathes in, lights another match.

 

They kiss, and Adam lets Ronan press him against the railing, feels the wood digging on his back and the fingers digging on his waist. Ronan shudders, exhaling shakily against his lips, and Adam deepens the kiss, hands tugging at the collar of his jacket impatiently, wanting him  _ closer.  _

 

“So what now?”

 

His feelings for Ronan are a wildfire, and Adam wants to burn forever.

 

_ “Everything.” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay oh my god, I can't believe this is the last chapter already! This is probably the first multichaptered fic I've actually, honest to god finished.
> 
> I wanted to say thank you for everyone to stuck with me until the end, everyone who read and enjoyed and subscribed! You guys are the best!
> 
> Until next time <3

**Author's Note:**

> hey you made it! if you liked it, maybe leave a kudo or a comment? Those seriously make my day!
> 
> or, you can come talk to me on [my tumblr](http://wearealltalesintheend.tumblr.com/)
> 
> and hey? thanks.


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